Opening
Transcriber's note:
IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN
* * * * * *
BY WILLIAM DE MORGAN
JOSEPH VANCE
An intensely human and humorous novel of life near London in the '50s. $1.75.
"If the reader likes both 'David Copperfield' and 'Peter Ibbetson' he can find the two books in this one."--The Independent.
"The first great English novel that has appeared in the 20th Century."--New York Times Review.
ALICE-FOR-SHORT
The story of a London waif, a friendly artist, his friends and family. $1.75.
"If any writer of the present era is read half a century hence, a quarter century, or even a decade, that writer is William De Morgan."--Boston Transcript.
"It is the Victorian age itself that speaks in these rich, interesting, overcrowded books.... Will be remembered as Dickens's novels are remembered."--Springfield Republican.
SOMEHOW GOOD
A lovable, humorous romance of modern England. $1.75.
"A higher quality of enjoyment than is derivable from the work of any other novelist now living and active in either England or America. Absolutely masterly."--Dial.
"A book as sound, as sweet, as wholesome, as wise, as any in the range of fiction."--Nation.
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
* * * * * *
IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN
by
WILLIAM DE MORGAN
Author of "Joseph Vance," "Alice-for-Short" and "Somehow Good"
New York Henry Holt and Company 1909
Copyright, 1909. By Henry Holt and Company
Published November, 1909
I. PAGE
OF LIZARANN COUPLAND, HER FATHER AND HER FAMILY. OF HIS PREVIOUS STORY, AND LIZARANN'S BIRTH 1
Chapter II
OF JIM'S MATCH-SELLING, AND HOW HE CAME TO TAKE TO IT. HOW HE WALKED HOME WITH LIZARANN 11
Chapter III
OF ROYD HALL, AND ITS LITERARY GUEST WHO HAD AN IMPOSSIBLE WIFE 24
Chapter IV
OF MISS ARKROYD AND HER AVIARY. HOW MR. CHALLIS WALKED IN THE GARDEN WITH HER. OF MR. TRIPTOLEMUS WRAXALL. AND OF HOW MR. CHALLIS WROTE TO HIS WIFE 37
Chapter V
OF A RAINY DAY AT ROYD. HOW A MOTOR-CAR CAME TO GRIEF. HOW MISS ARKROYD'S MOTHER WENT TO THANES CASTLE AND SHE HERSELF DIDN'T 46
Chapter VI
OF THE GRAUBOSCHIAN PHILOSOPHY. HOW JUDITH ARKROYD WALKED WITH MR. CHALLIS TO THE RECTORY. HOW HE SAID NOTHING ABOUT HIS WIFE BEING HIS DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER. HOW HE WAS OUT OF HIS ELEMENT AT THE RECTORY. SALADIN AND HIS CAT. HIS HEDGEHOG 57
Chapter VII
OF OTHER GUESTS AND THEIR TALK. OF A SOFA-HAVEN AND HOW MISS ARKROYD PERCEIVED THAT MR. CHALLIS COULD WRITE A TRAGEDY. BEAUTY A MATTER OF OPINION 76
Chapter VIII
OF HOW NO ACCIDENT HAD REALLY HAPPENED TO THE MOTOR-CAR. OF A COMBAT BETWEEN TWO SISTERS, CHIEFLY ABOUT THOSE OF PEOPLE'S DECEASED WIVES. OF FLIRTATIONS WITH MARRIED MEN. HOW CHALLIS WROTE A LONG AMUSING LETTER TO MARIANNE 89
Chapter IX
HOW MARIANNE SHOWED THAT LETTER TO AN INTIMATE FRIEND, MRS. ELDRIDGE. WHERE WAS THAT SOFA? OF COUNTRY AND TOWN HOUSES. JEALOUSY 101
Chapter X
CHALLIS'S adieu TO MISS ARKROYD. A LONG RIDE HOME, AND A COLD WELCOME. BUT IT WAS JOLLY TO BE BACK, AT ANY RATE. MISS ARKROYD'S MESSAGE DELIVERED 120
Chapter XI
VATTED RUM CORNER, AND CHESTNUTS. A YOUNG TURK. HOW LIZARANN TOLD MOTHER GROVES OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. OF AN AMBULANCE, AND WHAT WAS IN IT. HOW LIZARANN WENT HOME WITHOUT DADDY 135
Chapter XII
HOW UNCLE BOB HAD THE HORRORS. HOW LIZARANN ATE COLD CHESTNUTS IN BED. DELIRIUM TREMENS. HOW JIM COULD SEE AT NIGHT, AND WAS UNDER THE BED. POLICE! 148
Chapter XIII
HOW THE RECTOR OF ROYD TOOK A WRONG TURNING, AND PICKED UP LIZARANN IN THE SNOW. MR. STEPTOE'S KNIFE, AND HOW LIZARANN MADE HIM LEAVE HOLD OF IT. HOW AUNT STINGY WAS HANDY IN CASE OF ANYTHING, AND UNCLE BOB WENT TO SLEEP ON A SECOND-HAND SOFA 163
Chapter XIV
OF THE END OF THE BLIZZARD, AND OF SIMON MAGUS. HOW MR. TAYLOR FOUND A DOCTOR. OF A CHASE THROUGH THE SNOW, AND A CANAL LOCK. WHAT WAS FOUND IN IT. BUT SIMON WAS INVISIBLE 175
Chapter XV
HOW LIZARANN WAS TAKEN TO MISS FOSSETT'S, BUT HAD A STITCH IN HER SIDE, AND WASN'T TO GO TO DADDY TO-DAY. HOW THE RECTOR WENT TO JIM IN THE HOSPITAL, AND JIM WAS DISAPPOINTED ABOUT HIM 187
Chapter XVI
BREAKFAST IN GROSVENOR SQUARE. STRAINED RELATIONS OF TWO SISTERS. A BATTLE INTERRUPTED. SAMARIA A GOOD-NATURED PLACE. WHO WAS TO PAY? 202
Chapter XVII
LADY ARKROYD'S VISIT TO JIM. GOODY TALK. JIM AND HIS MAKER. HOW MR. TAYLOR VISITED ANOTHER CASE. A DEATH-BED CONFESSION 213
Chapter XVIII
THAT NASTY LITTLE STETHOSCOPE! A RETROSPECT ABOUT THE RECTOR AND MISS FOSSETT. A TRANSACTION IN KISSES. AUNT STINGY'S WEEDS, AND WHAT A GOOD COOK SHE WAS 225
Chapter XIX
HOW AUNT STINGY BECAME MARIANNE'S COOK. A MOST OFFENSIVE BIBLE CLASS. MR. CHALLIS'S JUDITH. ESTRILD AND THE OSTROGOTHS. THE ACROPOLIS CLUB 236
Chapter XX
MRS. ELDRIDGE IN FULL BLOW. THE IMPROPER STUDY OF MANKIND. NOTHING REALLY WRONG! AN IDENTIFICATION WITH A VENGEANCE. HOW CHALLIS CAME HOME LATE 248
Chapter XXI
HOW JIM RETURNED HOME, ALL BUT ONE LEG, AND LIZARANN CALLED ON HIM. HAD THE DEVIL GOT UNCLE BOB? HOW BRIDGETTICKS HAD HEARD OF A SCHEME FOR LIZARANN'S BENEFIT 263
Chapter XXII
THE EXACT STORY OF CHALLIS'S FIRST WIFE'S FIRST MARRIAGE. HOW HE AND MARIANNE MISSED THEIR EXPLANATION. CHARLOTTE THE DETECTIVE. CHALLIS'S SECOND COURTSHIP, IN A NUTSHELL 276
Chapter XXIII
HOW CHALLIS CALLED ON MISS ARKROYD IN GROSVENOR SQUARE. A SPRAINED ANKLE. ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE. KING SOLOMON AND HIS DJINN BOTTLE 284
Chapter XXIV
HOW MARIANNE WENT TO TULSE HILL. OF BOB'S PHONOGRAPH, AND HOW HE POSTED A LETTER TO JUDITH. OF MARIANNE'S RETURN, AND MORE MISUNDERSTANDINGS. BUT IT WOULD BE ALL RIGHT IN THE MORNING 297
Chapter XXV
OF AN UNCALLED FAMILY ROW, AND HOW BOB'S BREAKFAST WAS POSTPONED. OF A LETTER FROM JUDITH THAT MADE MATTERS WORSE 315
Chapter XXVI
AT ROYD AGAIN. THE BREAD OF IDLENESS. A GOOD PLAIN COOK. A DIALOGUE BETWEEN A PRIEST AND A PROFANE AUTHOR. THE RECTORY AND ITS GUEST, LIZARANN. HOW THE CARRIAGE DIDN'T STOP 323
Chapter XXVII
HOW JUDITH'S STAGE MANIA HAD COOLED. TROUT BEND, AND A TICKLISH INTERVIEW. HALF-A-MILE OFF TEA. A DISCUSSION ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 337
Chapter XXVIII
THE BRITISH HOUSEKEEPER. HOW MRS. ELDRIDGE CAME INSTEAD OF TO-MORROW. HER ADVICE. TELEGRAPH GIRLS. A FRENCH WOMAN'S IDEAS. HOW THE CAT GOT NO SLEEP. HOW MARIANNE POSTED A CIVIL SORT OF LETTER IN THE PILLAR-BOX, AND WAS SORRY 353
Chapter XXIX
HOW CHALLIS MET LIZARANN IN SOCIETY. OF A LECTURE THE RECTOR READ CHALLIS, AND ITS EFFECT ON HIS IMAGE OF MARIANNE. HOW HE HADN'T BEEN TO ASHCROFT. IT WAS AN UNSATISFACTORY LETTER THAT! 368
Chapter XXX
HOW CHALLIS HAD A NEW NEIGHBOUR AT DINNER AND METAPHYSICS AFTER. HOW HE WAS GUILTY OF EAVESDROPPING, AND MET MISS ARKROYD AFTER IN A LITTLE GARDEN CALLED TOPHET. A FOOL'S PASSION. WHAT ABOUT BOB? 382
Chapter XXXI
CONCERNING A ROSEBUD, AND MARIANNE'S TORTOISESHELL KNIFE. CHALLIS'S PRESENCE OF MIND. THE FOOL ON FIRE. DEFINITION WANTED OF DEFINITION. CHALLIS'S SUDDEN CALL BACK TO TOWN. HOW SIBYL HAD SEEN IT ALL 394
Chapter XXXII
HOW LIZARANN AND JOAN PLAYED TRUANT. OF A RIDE IN A MOTOR, AND ITS BAD EFFECTS. HOW LIZARANN CONVALESCED, AND JUDITH WALKED HOME FROM CHURCH WITH THE RECTOR. HOW MARIANNE HAD BOLTED WITH THE TWO CHILDREN 412
Chapter XXXIII
CHALLIS'S INSIPID RETURN HOME. WHAT HAD IT ALL BEEN, THIS DREAM? OLD LINKS WITH BYGONES. HOW CONFESS, AND TO WHAT? OF A FIRE GOD GAVE FOR OTHER ENDS 425
Chapter XXXIV
A BAD RAILWAY ACCIDENT. AND, AFTER ALL, MARIANNE WAS AT HOME. CHALLIS'S REPORT OF ROYD. BUT, NO!--MARIANNE WOULDN'T HAVE JUDITH SLURRED OVER 434
Chapter XXXV
OF MUTUAL MISTRUST. HANDSOME JUDITH! BUT MARIANNE HAD NO WISH TO PRY INTO HER AFFAIRS. HOW MATTERS WERE COMFORTABLER. PLEASE BURN THAT POSTSCRIPT! CHALLIS'S EXPLANATION. HOW IT FAILED, AND HE WENT FOR A WALK 444
Chapter XXXVI
HOW CHALLIS AND HIS WIFE PARTED. A DINNER AT THE CLUB, AND HIS RETURN FROM IT. WHAT HAS BECOME OF YOUR MISTRESS? A LETTER FROM MARIANNE CRAIK. DAMN CHARLOTTE ELDRIDGE! 456
Chapter XXXVII
HOW CHALLIS COULDN'T BELIEVE MARIANNE WAS IN EARNEST. HOW HE SOUGHT HER AND FAILED. THE EYES OF HOLY WRIT. THE DISGRACEFUL TRUTH. DEAR MISS ARKROYD! WHY FIGHT AGAINST INFLICTED LIBERTY? GLENVAIRLOCH TO LET 465
Chapter XXXVIII
THE EMPTY HERMITAGE. A COMPROMISE ABOUT BOB. HOW MRS. STEPTOE HAD NOTHING TO CONCEAL. HOW CINTILLA CAUGHT MR. CHALLIS. CALYPSO'S RUG ISLAND. GOOD-BYE! PROMISE NOT TO COME TO BIARRITZ! THE SKEIN WOUND 481
Chapter XXXIX
OF THE NEWS MR. ELPHINSTONE TOLD MRS. PROTHEROE. HOW CHALLIS HAD FOLLOWED JUDITH TO MENTONE. YOUNG MRS. CRAIK AND HER DEAD DICKY-BIRD. HOW CHALLIS BECAME A KNIGHT 497
Chapter XL
HOW MISS FOSSETT WENT TO ROYD. ON SUSPENSION OF OPINION. ANXIETY ABOUT LIZARANN. A VISIT TO JIM, AND A RETROSPECT. HOW MISS FOSSETT MADE A NICE MESS OF IT 513
Chapter XLI
HOW JIM FOUND A MISSION IN LIFE, AND LIZARANN MOVED TO MRS. FORKS'S COTTAGE. OF A FINE AUTUMN, AND HOW ALL WAS RIGHT TILL SOMETHING WENT WRONG. OF A SEASIDE SCHEME, AND ITS EFFECTS ON JIM 523
Chapter XLII
HOW A NAUGHTY LITTLE GIRL CAME OUT IN THE COLD AND TALKED TO HER DADDY. AND HOW WINTER MADE HER WORSE. OF A TALK BETWEEN THE RECTOR AND MISS FOSSETT, AND A SUGGESTION SHE MADE TO HIM 534
Chapter XLIII
CHALLIS'S VISIT TO THE RECTORY. A VISIT TO JIM AT THE WELL. HOW LIZARANN WAS AT THE SEASIDE. ST. AUGUSTIN'S SUMMER. HOW THEY MET SALADIN. HOW CHALLIS TOLD ALL 543
Chapter XLIV
THE RECTOR'S OPINION, AND WHY IT CARRIED NO WEIGHT. OF THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER, AND WHY CHALLIS DOUBTED IT. YET THE RECTOR TOLERATED HIS IMPIETY 552
Chapter XLV
HOW CHALLIS AND JUDITH MET AGAIN AT TROUT BEND, AND TALKED IT OVER. HOW SHE CRIED OFF, FEELING SECURE. AND OF THE ARRANGEMENT THEY MADE. OF A CENTENARIAN WHO GOT HALF-A-SOVEREIGN 563
Chapter XLVI
HOW LIZARANN SAW THE SEA, AND A CHINESE LADY WROTE A BAD ACCOUNT OF HER TO HER FRIENDS. HOW IT NEVER REACHED JIM, AND MISS FOSSETT WAS WIRED FOR. HOW THE RECTOR HAD TO GO TO CHIPPING CHESTER 574
Chapter XLVII
OF THE APPROACH OF LIZARANN'S RETURN, AND HOW JIM'S HOPES WERE FED BY OLD DAVID. HOW JIM DID NOT CURSE A MOTOR-CAR. HOW LIZARANN DIED OF TUBERCULOSIS 585
Chapter XLVIII
HOW JIM ADDED STORIES TO HIS AIR-CASTLE, AND SMOKED HIS LAST PIPE. HOW HE KNEW CHALLIS'S VOICE AGAIN. WHO HAD TO BE AT THE PARK GATE BY NINE. HOW JIM HEARD THE MOTOR COMING BACK, AND LIZARANN'S VOICE. HOW ATHELSTAN TAYLOR ARRIVED WITHOUT HER. OF JIM'S DEATH, AND HERS 599
Chapter XLIX
JUDITH'S VAGARIES. HOW SHE BROUGHT SIR ALFRED CHALLIS, INSENSIBLE, TO ROYD HALL IN A MOTOR. A MESSAGE PER MR. BROWNRIGG TO THE RECTOR. HOW TO PROBE THE MYSTERY. JUDITH'S RESERVE. PUBLIC IMPATIENCE. THE CHAUFFEUR'S TESTIMONY 614
Chapter L
OF MARIANNE AT BROADSTAIRS, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A "DREADNOUGHT." AND HOW SHE READ OF HER HUSBAND'S ACCIDENT ON ITS ARMOUR-PLATES, AND AT ONCE STARTED FOR ROYD. BUT SUPPOSE THEY CALLED HER "LADY CHALLIS"! 628
Chapter LI
HOW CHALLIS CAME TO, AND SPOKE. BUT HE ASKED FOR MARIANNE, AND DIDN'T KNOW JUDITH FROM ADAM. HOW THE LATTER PROMISED TO TELL HER FATHER. THE WORLD'S GUESSES, MEANWHILE. HOW THE DUCHESS SAID WHAT THE POINT WAS, AND CHALLIS RELAPSED 643
Chapter LII
OF JUDITH'S STATE OF MIND, AND HOW SHE TOLD HER FATHER. BUT DID NOT IMPRESS HIM AS HE WOULD HAVE WISHED. WHO KNOWS WHAT JUDITH WAS? OF A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR TO THE HALL. HOW NO ONE RECOGNIZED MARIANNE. IS MY HUSBAND DYING? A SCENE ON THE BIG STAIRCASE, AND HOW TWO TOFFS WERE FAR FROM ODIOUS. HOW THE NURSE RECOGNIZED ATHELSTAN TAYLOR. HOW JUDITH SAID GOOD-BYE TO CHALLIS. HOW IT CAME OUT WHO MR. KEITH HORNE'S FRIEND WAS 652
Chapter LIII
A POSTSCRIPT. MR. AND MRS. ATHELSTAN TAYLOR. MR. AND MRS. BROWNRIGG. ODDS AND ENDS OF SEQUELS. THE DREAM VANISHES, READABLE BITS AND ALL! 674
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS ONLY 688
IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN
Chapter I
OF LIZARANN COUPLAND, HER FATHER AND HER FAMILY. OF HIS PREVIOUS STORY, AND LIZARANN'S BIRTH
Lizarann Coupland did not know what her father's employment was; but she knew that, every morning, she saw him to the corner of Bladen Street, put his left hand on the palin's of number three, and left him to shift for himself. She was on honour not to watch him down Bladen Street, and she had a keen sense of honour. She also knew by experience that when her aunt, Mrs. Steptoe, said she would learn her a lesson she wouldn't easy forget, Mrs. Steptoe was not referring to teacher-book instruction like at school. And this lesson, Lizarann understood, would be imparted by her aunt with some blunt instrument, perhaps a slipper, in case she failed to observe her promise. She was not to go spyin' and starin' after Father no farther than where it was wrote up "Old Vatted Rum, fivepence-halfpenny" at the Green Man and Still. It was a compact, and Lizarann observed it--always running away as fast as possible to get out of reach of temptation as soon as ever her father's fingers closed on the knob of a particular low paling. It was a paling good to turn upside down over, which affirmed the territorial rights of the Green Man over a certain six-foot foreshore of pavement liable else to be claimed by the Crown, or the Authority.
Lizarann's father, James Coupland, was stone-blind, and the reason she was sent with him every morning was because he had to cross Cazenove Street, and Dartley Street, and Trott Street, before you come to pavement all the way, and it wasn't safe. As soon as you got to the Green Man, why there you were! Only like touchin' the wall, and your stick on the right, and on you kep' direck. But as to what Lizarann's father did, at some place on this side of the next bad crossing, his six-year-old daughter never could guess. All she knew was that she was useful, and assisted towards some public object, not easily understood by a little girl, when she piloted her father to and from his starting-point of continuous pavement, as a ship through shoals and cross-currents, to the mouth of a canal. But the metaphor of Lizarann's flight when she left the ship to its captain is not an easy one. If only metaphors would not be so lobsided!
That her father was a supplicant for public charity was a surmise that never crossed Lizarann's mind. An idea can be got of how she thought of him by any young lady who knows, for instance, that her father is in the Custom-House, but who has never seen the Custom-House, and has no idea what he does there; or even by one who, having for parent a sexton, and being kept in ignorance of his functions, conceives of him as the Archbishop of Canterbury; or more easily--to take yet another parallel--by one situated like Lizarann's little friend Bridgetticks, down a turnin' out of Trott Street, whose grandfather was in an almshouse; but who was inflated past all bearing by his livery or uniform when the old chap was out for his holiday, and Bridget was allowed to walk with him all along Trott Street and round the Park. There was no abidin' of her, struttin' about!
"My grandfather's richer than your father," said Bridgetticks, after one such occasion, "and he's got his heyesight, too."
"Fathers are better than grandfathers," said Lizarann. "Fathers goes down Bladen Street holdin' on to nuffin', and ain't they rich, neither? My father he fetches home nine shillings in coarpers. Aunt Stingy, she let Uncle Steptoe get at it, and he laid some of it out in gin." The name of this aunt, as Lizarann pronounced it, seemed to ascribe a waspish character to its owner rather than a parsimonious one.
"You lyin' little thing, how you ever can!" exclaimed Bridgetticks. This was because the daring sum of nine shillings took her aback. But on consideration another line of tactics seemed more effective. "Nine shillin's ain't nothin'," she said. "My grandfather, he's got an allowance regular, he has."
Lizarann paused before replying. She was confronted with an unforeseen thing, foreign to human experience. What was an allowance? On the whole, it would be better to keep clear of it. She changed the venue of the discussion. "He's dressed up, he is," she said. But she spoke with diffidence, too, and her friend felt conciliated.
"Dressed up's a falsehood," she said, but without asperity. "If you'd 'a said cloze like the Lord Mayor's Show, now! But little infant-school pippings like you don't know nothink." Lizarann felt put upon her mettle.
"My father," she said, "he's got a board with wrote upon. Hangs it round his neck, he does. Like on Harthurses carts and the milk."
"You never see it on his neck, not yet you can't read. You can't read the words on Arthurses cart." But Lizarann could read one--the middle one--and did it, a syllable at a time: "Prov-i-ded." It was correct, and a triumph for the decipherer. But she was doomed to humiliation. Bridgetticks was a great reader, like Buckle, and could read what was wrote on milk-carts all through.
"Any little biby could read that! You can't read 'fammy-lies,' nor yet 'dyly.' It's no use your tryin'." But Lizarann felt unhappy, and yearned for Culture, and tried very hard to read "families" and "daily" on each side of "provided," while Bridgetticks gave attention to a doll's camp on the doorstep. But "families" is very hard to read--you know it is!--and Lizarann quite forgot to put back a beautiful piece of stick-liquorice in her mouth during her efforts to master it.
Anybody would have thought, to look along Tallack Street, where this colloquy took place, that the announcement on Arthurses cart "Families provided daily" was followed out literally by Arthurs, and that that Trust or Syndicate was driving a brisk trade in the families it provided daily. To-day was a holiday at the Board school, and the whole street teemed with prams. And in every pram was one biby, or more, assimilating Arthurses milk. But they themselves had not been provided by Arthurs; merely the milk.
The prams were nearly the only vehicles in Tallack Street, which ran straight acrost from the railway-arch to the 'Igh Road, parallel-like, as you might say, to Trott Street. Even Arthurses cart wasn't a real cart, only drove by hand. A nearer approach to an ideal was the coal, which came behind a horse, and sold itself for a shillin' a hundred, more or less, accordin' as the season. The scales, they'd weigh down to twenty-eight pound, if you didn't want to have capital lying idle; but then it was a sight easier to be cheated at that, and you could always bring two coal-scuttles, and if one of 'em was wore through, why, a stout bit of brown paper, coverin' in the hole, and there you were! Because the dropping of fragments of coal on the pavement was not only wasteful, but giv' them boys something to aim with. Ammunition was scarce, owing to the way the road was kep'; similar, them boys took every opportunity.
There were two other vehicles that were known to Tallack Street. One came every day with a drum, and sold vegetables. The proprietor had made himself hoarse, many years since, with shouting about the freshness of his stock between the outbreaks on the drum, and, as life advanced and his lung-power declined, the drum-performances encroached on the oratory. This suited a large majority of the inhabitants, conveying a sense of Life--was, in fact, thought almost equal to the Play--by those who had been to it--and was so appreciated by Lizarann and Bridgetticks that they would petition to be allowed to stand in contact with the drum to feel the noise inside of 'em like.
The other vehicle was, however, the climax of the Joy of Living in Tallack Street, only it demanded a 'apenny a time, and you had to save up. But if you could afford it, it was rapture. How describe it? Well, it was drawed by a donkey, and went round and round and round. You yourself, and your friends, sat on truncated chairs at the end of radial spokes rotating horizontally on a hub, which played melancholy tunes, and you could tell what they were by looking, because there was the ticket of it, every time a new tune come. But the execution supplied no clue, or very little, to its identity.
Tallack Street, as you will have inferred, was a cul-de-sac, and therefore very popular as a playground with the children of the neighbourhood. It ended in a dead wall, formerly enclosing an extinct factory, which had survived the coming of the railway, by which it had been acquired, and for some reason spared; about which factory, or, rather, its remains, an understanding had been current for about a generation that it could be took on lease from the Company and adapted as workshops. The board was almost illegible, except one word "inquire," of no value apart from its sequel, which anyone who could read would have told you at once was a name and address; but as to what name and what address, it would have taken a scollard to tell that.
* * * * *
There came occasionally to Tallack Street a lady, who appeared to Lizarann to make her way into her Aunt Steptoe's home on insufficient pretexts. She certainly was not the sort of lady to get her shoes mended by a working cobbler in a suburban slum, and Lizarann made no pretence of understanding her. She saw very little of any of her aunt's visitors, because she was always sent, or bundled, out the moment they appeared, and only allowed in the house again after their departure.
She was interested and pleased, therefore, when this lady, who was dressed quite beautiful, developed as a friend of Teacher, the familiar spirit of the Dale Road Schools, where this little girl was learning to sew quite beautiful. She was still more interested when she became aware that the conversation between these two ladies related to her own family. Teacher and the lady talked out quite loud close to her--as if she didn't matter, bless you!
"All the streets are not as bad as Tallack Street," said the lady. "And all the houses in Tallack Street are not so bad as that house at the end. People named Townroe, I think--awful people!"
"Do you mean Steptoe?"
"Oh yes--Steptoe. I've tried to talk to the woman, and it's perfectly useless. You can't do anything when the man's in the way. And as for him--well, you know, Adeline, when these people don't attend either church or chapel, it's simply hopeless. There's nothing to begin upon."
"The man drinks. Of course!"
"Of course! He seemed sober, though, the only time I saw him, but very sulky. Oh dear!--he was trying."
"What did he say?"
"He wouldn't say anything--wouldn't answer! And he said to his wife: 'You say a something word'--you understand, Adeline?--'you say a something word, and see if I don't smack your eye. You try it!' My daughter talked for an hour, and then he said: 'If you think you'll sedooce me into committing of myself, you'll find you're mistook. So I should think better of it, if I was you. Yours werry truly, Robert Steptoe.' Just as if he was writing a letter." Both ladies laughed, and Lizarann pricked her finger badly, and it redded all over the 'emstitch. But she couldn't understand the laugh. She was not fond of her aunt's husband; you can't love pock-marks unless they have some counterpoise in beauty of disposition. But she had a certain spirit of partisanship about her belongings, too!
"I suppose the children go to some school--Board School or something," said Teacher.
"They haven't children, thank Heaven! these people," said the outside lady. "But there's a little girl--somehow--with a father. They said she came here--at least, I suppose the 'school-house up the road' meant here."
"Then she must be here now. What was her name? Did you make out?"
"Eliza Ann something--Doubleday, I think, as near as I can recollect. No, it wasn't Doubleday. What could it have been?..." And this lady tapped one hand with the other, to keep on showing how hard she was thinking.
"Was it Eliza Ann Coupland? Come here, Lizarann, and tell the lady if it was you."
Lizarann approached by instalments, in awe. She had received false impressions from the conversation--one that her uncle could write a letter, and this lady knew it. A second that her aunt's children--if any--would have been all over little sand-pits that would catch and hold the grime awful, like their father, and that therefore we ought to be thankful. A third that she was a "little girl somehow," and she had never been told that she was one somehow, only that she was a little girl.
"Are you the little girl?" said the lady.
"I don't know, miss," said Lizarann. She thought the lady seemed impatient. And whom did she mean by "they" when she said, "Oh dear!--how trying they are!"?
"Ought I to tell her to say 'My lady,' or not?" said Teacher.
"Oh, bother!" said the lady. "What does your father do, my dear? You're a nice little thing, only your mouth's too big."
Timid murmurs came from the catechumen. "What's that you say? Father goes out to work? What does father go out to work at?"
"That's impossible!" said Teacher. "Her father's blind, and she leads him about."
"I hope you're not telling stories, child, like the rest, because I like you all except your mouth. Come close here, so that I can hear you, and tell me what your father does. Only don't splutter or gabble!"
Whereupon Lizarann gave her version of her father's professional employment. She knew she was to say, if pressed on the point, that her father was "an asker," and she said it, standing first on one leg and then on the other uneasily. She had a mixture of misgiving and confidence that the statement would be sufficient; just as you or I might have felt in stating, for instance, that our father was an apparitor, or a stevedore, or a turnover-at-press. But she had absolutely no idea of the meaning of her phrases.
"What on earth does the child mean? Say it again, small person!" Thus the lady.
"A asker!" The child had the name perfectly clear, and added "Yass!"--to drive it home--with eyes of assurance standing wide open. Both ladies made her repeat it, and asked her what she meant by it; but she evidently did not know. They pondered and speculated, till on a sudden a light broke. "Is it possible she means a beggar?" said Miss Fossett. Then the two of them spoke in an undertone, and Lizarann felt that her family affairs were being discussed over her head, but by creatures too great for her to take exception to, or even to interpret. Presently the lady addressed her again:
"What does he ask for, little stuffy? Yes, you may come as close as that. What does he ask for, child?"
Thereat Lizarann, in support of her family credit, said: "He took all of nine shillings in coarpers once on a time." She couldn't compete with the lady in birth and position, but she had a proper pride in her race, for all that.
The lady and Miss Fossett looked at one another, and the latter said: "It's quite possible. They do sometimes." And Lizarann felt flattered and that she had done her duty. And that when she told her father, he would certainly give her a peppermint-drop. She had a sense of an improved position as she went back to her sewing. But the two ladies went on talking about her under their breath, and she fancied they were resuming some incidents of the previous Saturday at Tallack Street. Teacher seemed to have heard something of them, and she now connected them with her pupil. As the lady ripened towards departure she became more audible.
"It only shows the truth of what I'm always saying to Sir Murgatroyd. How can you expect them to be any better when they have such wretched homes? Give them air and light and sanitation and things, and then talk goody to them if you like.... Oh dear!--I must rush. I've promised to go with Sibyl and those Inglis girls to Hurlingham this afternoon." Then the lady had a recrudescence of her perception that Lizarann was funny, for she turned round, going away, to say to Miss Fossett: "Oh dear, how funny they are! Fancy an Asker!" and, as it were, fell a little into Miss Fossett's bosom to find sympathy, afterwards kissing her, and saying, "But how good you are!" rather gushily, and making off. She did say, however, to Lizarann: "Good-bye, little person! Consider I've kissed you. I would, only it's such a sticky day."
Much of this conversation would have been quite unintelligible to the child, even if she had heard the whole of it. Her mind was not prepared to receive it, as, not having had much time to reflect since her birth, she had not noticed that her domestic life had anything exceptional about it. Extension of her social circle had not, so far, convinced her that there was anything unusual in their rows and quarrels; in fact, she was gently creeping on to a belief that Steptoes--their inclusive name--was the rule, and the balance of the Universe the exception. But her unconsciousness of the actual was liable to inroads from without, and that day at school roused the curiosity of an inquiring mind. Lizarann asked herself for the first time whether the conditions of her home-life were really normal, and nothing better was to be looked forward to in the future. No doubt Tallack Street would have sided with the lady in the views she expressed of any one house in it, though each house would have laid claim to an exceptional character for itself. But in the case of Steptoe's its unanimity would have been impressive; for Lizarann's Uncle Steptoe he'd be in liquor as often as not, and frequently aim a stool or suchlike at his wife's head--besides language you could hear the length of the street.
It does not follow that he had no provocation. Mrs. Steptoe was a fine study of the effect of exasperating circumstances on a somewhat uncertain temper, and Lizarann conceived of the result as a typical aunt. She had married, some twelve years since, from motives difficult of analysis, a cobbler who drank, towards whom she had always professed indifference. She seemed to have based a low opinion of all mankind on an assumption that they were none on 'em much better than her husband, and most of 'em were a tidy sight worse. If so, the tidiness of the sight might have disappointed orderly, old-fashioned folk. Not that Bob Steptoe was a bad sort when he was sober. Only that was so seldom.
Now, on the Saturday evening in question, this uncle by marriage of Lizarann, having previously taken too much beer, took too much whisky, and became quarrelsome. "A man ain't always answerable, look at it how you may!" said Tallack Street. Let us hope Mr. Steptoe was not, as on this occasion he loosened three of his wife's front teeth and indented the bridge of her nose. His blind brother-in-law, returning at this moment, personally conducted by his small daughter, was unable to see, but guessed that Steptoe was under restraint by neighbours, and from mixed sounds of pain and rage and inarticulate spluttering that his wife had been the victim of his violence. Poor Jim, mad with anger, besought the restraining party only to let him get hold of his brother-in-law, and he would give him what would recall him to his memory on future occasions. Feeling the desirableness of this, they complied; and Mr. Steptoe, when, after a painful experience of the superior strength of Jim, he got his head out of Chancery, felt ill, and was conducted to bed by his wife. Of whom Lizarann afterwards reported that when she heard Uncle Bob get louder, Aunt Stingy, she said, "You do, and I'll call Jim back again," and then Uncle Bob he shut up.
This little girl's father had been in the Merchant Service and had lost his eyesight through an explosion of petroleum in the harbour at Cape Town. Current belief held that it was his own fault, saying that Jim Coupland hadn't any call to drop a lighted match into a hole in an oil-cask that was standing in the January sun; still less was it necessary that he should look after it through the hole, and receive the full blast of the inevitable explosion in his face. He admitted these facts, but maintained that a hundred oil-casks might have exploded in his face, and no harm done, if he had not, a few days before, seen the Flying Dutchman. This belief could not be shaken by argument, not even by the fact that the other men on his watch, all of whom had seen the Phantom Ship, had retained their eyesight intact. Didn't old Sam Nuttall--and nobody could pretend he hadn't been forty years in the Navy--say the very first thing of all, when he told him he'd seen the Dutchman: "Look you here, my son," he said, "you've got to look sharp and get yourself hanged or shot or drownded, if you want to die with eyes in your head"? And warn't he right? Anyhow, the coincidence of the accident a few days later had created a firm faith in the mind of Jim Coupland, and very few had the heart to try to shake it.
Whatever the cause, Jim Coupland came back eyeless from that voyage, and found his wife lately delivered of a female infant that did well, and became Lizarann. But her mother did ill, presumably, and the doctor that attended her did certainly, if the verdict of Tallack Street was warranted. She had no call to die, said Tallack Street. Perhaps its many matrons did not allow enough for the hideous shock of poor eyeless Jim's reappearance. She did die, and poor Jim, the happy bridegroom of a year ago, was left a widower at eight-and-twenty, hopelessly blind, with a baby he could never see.
Oh the tragedies Life's records have to show, that remain unpublished, and must do so!--all but a chance one or two, such as this one just outlined.
Lizarann was named after the ship her father made his last voyage in, or almost after it. The ship was the Anne Eliza, and the parson got the name wrong. Jim said it wasn't any odds, that he could reckon; and Mrs. Steptoe, his sister, said, on the contrary, it ran easier, took that way. So Lizarann she became, and Lizarann she remained. And the tale how father lost his eyesight through seeing the Flying Dutchman was the ever-present Romance of her youth, and would constantly creep into her conversation, even when the subject-matter thereof was already interesting--as, for instance, when she was discussing with Bridgetticks an expected, or perhaps we should say proposed, addition to the family of Lizarann's doll, which had been fixed for the ensuing Sunday. There could be no doubt--as there is usually in the case of human parents--about the exact hour of arrival, as the Baby was ready dressed for the event her intended mother was looking forward to, in hypothetical retirement, on the house-doorstep. She and her friend were comparing notes on previous events of a like nature.
"Oh, you story!" said Lizarann, but not offensively--it was only current chat. "My father says I understand. He says I understand ship's victuals and port and starboard." Grasp of these involved proficiency in other departments of thought, so the implication seemed to run. But Bridget wouldn't have it so.
"Ya'ar little silly!" she said, standing on the parapidge, and hanging to the riling, so as to project backwards into the little forecourt; you couldn't, speakin' accurately, call it a garden, but it had the feelin' about it, too. "Ya'ar little silly Simplicity Sairah in a track! Ship's victuals ain't nothing to understand, nor yet port and starboard! Wait till you can understand fly-wheels and substraction engines! They'll make you sit up and talk!" This little girl's father was an engineer in charge of a steam-roller.
Bridget would have said the exact reverse if the two excursions into the relative fields of knowledge had been exchanged between them. Lizarann respected her friend too much to conceive of her as a time-server, and her mind cast about to fortify her position on other lines.
"My father he says I can understand the Flying Dutchman, and he seen her. Yass! Afore ever he lost his heyesight!"
"He's lyin', then. Dutchmen ain't women. I seen a picter-Dutchman in trowsers." Lizarann cogitated gravely on this before she answered. "A ship's a her," she then said. "All ships is hers." She then added, but not as a saddening fact, merely as a thing true and noticeable, "He never seen me, father didn't."
Chapter II
OF JIM'S MATCH-SELLING, AND HOW HE CAME TO TAKE TO IT. HOW HE WALKED HOME WITH LIZARANN
Can anyone among us whose life is full of action, with Hope in his heart and Achievement on his horizon; whose pillow whispers at night afterthoughts of a fruitful day, and on the day that follows can, without affectation, reproach the head that lies too long on it with having lost something precious that cannot be regained--can such a one conceive the meaning of blind or crippled life, that left Hope dead by the roadside long ago, and dares not look ahead to see the barren land; whose pillow speaks no word about the past, but only welcome hints about oblivion, and a question with the daylight--why rise? Why rise, indeed, and maybe miss a dream of a bygone day? Better lie still, and thank God for the dream-world!
"I wonder what that poor devil feels like," said one first-class traveller outside the railway-station to another, who, like himself, gave the impression that he had plenty of luggage somewhere else, which was being well looked after by a servant whose wages were too high. Both were young men, well under twenty-five at a guess; and though one was fair and the other was dark, and they were not the same height, and their features were not alike, still the predominant force of their class-identity was so strong that individuality was lost in it, and most folk, seeing them en passant would have spoken of them thenceforth as "those two young swells," and dismissed them with an impression that either might be at any time substituted for the other without any great violence to contemporary history. They appeared to be sauntering to the train, and the poor devil was Jim Coupland, at his usual post by the long blank wall he used to feel his way down, after leaving Lizarann at the corner she might not pass. The wonderer had bought matches of Jim that he didn't want--for Jim was obliged to make a show of selling matches, to be within the law--and had returned change for sixpence, honourably offered by Jim. "I can't see you, master," said the blind man, "and I never shall, not if the sky falls, but I thank ye kindly. And I'll tell my little lass on ye, home to-night." It was the only recompense Jim had to offer, and he offered it.
"I should kill myself straight off," said the other traveller. His speech was quite as consequent on his friend's as most current speech is on its antecedent; you listen closely when you hear talk, and see if this is not the case! "Stop a bit! Don't make me split this cigar. I haven't got another, and nothing fit to smoke is procurable in this neighbourhood ... there!--that's right, now.... The little chocket wouldn't snickle out. Let's see! What topic were we giving our powerful brains to? Oh, ah!--the blind beggar. You recollect the fellah?"
"Never saw him before, that I know of."
"Perhaps you haven't. I have. But you remember the two little girls?"
"Which two?"
"That morning we went to inquire about the railroad arch. Of course, you remember." His friend assented. "Well!--that little girl is this chap's kid. She'll come in the evening to take him home. I've seen 'em about together, many a time."
"I remember two little girls, where we went down that street my mother and sister slum in. Tallack Street. Which was the kid? The bony one with the nostril ajar, and the front teeth, that called you a cure?"
"No--the little plummy modest one, with both eyes stood open, and something to suck. Large dark eyes." No really nice young man, such as we like, can ever mention a girl's eyes, even a young child's, without a shade of tenderness.
"What a sensitive youth you are, Scipio!" His friend sees through him. "The other was a little Jezebel."
"Came out of Termagant's egg, I should say. Isn't there a bird called a Termagant? There ought to be."
"I quite agree, but I doubt it. Well--to return to the point--you say you would kill yourself, straight off. How do you know that? You think you would now, but you wouldn't when it came to the scratch. This man doesn't want to kill himself."
"Because of the little girl. He'd kill himself fast enough if he had nothing to live for."
"My dear Scipio, that is sheer petitio principii. A man's having no wish at all to live takes his wish to die for granted. Unless he has an unnatural taste for mere equilibrium for its own sake. But the real point is that if you were this chap, you would have exactly the same inducements to live that he has--the little girl, for instance."
"Be calm, William! Allow me to point out that you are begging the question yourself. The hypothetical form--'If you were this chap'--if interpreted to imply an exchange of identity in all particulars, takes for granted that what this chap does now I should do then. Clearly, I shouldn't kill myself, or shouldn't have done so up to date, as he hasn't. But the meaning of my remark is obvious to any mind not warped and distorted by casuistry. I refer more particularly to your own. Its meaning is that if I had two scabs instead of eyes, and was reduced to flattering the vanity of my fellow-countrymen in order to stimulate their liberality, I should by preference select Euthanasia." And he lighted his cigar, which had been waiting.
"I wish that little girl was here now, to call you a 'cure' again, Scipio. She did you a lot of good."
* * * * *
Jim Coupland heard as far as "I should kill myself straight off," which he certainly was not meant to do by the speakers. But neither of them were on their guard against the quickened hearing of the blind, and neither of them heard that Jim answered, though each had an impression the blind man was talking to himself. As for Jim, his impression was that his words reached. But then he had no means of knowing how far off the young men were, and that, as against the shrewdness of his own hearing, they were little better than deaf at that distance. What he said was:
"I was minded to, young Master, at the first go off. But the wish was on me strong for the voice of my wife, and the lips of her. And when I lost her--ye understand--it was the cry of the baby new-born that held me. I'd be shamed to think upon it now, young Master. The day's bound to go by, and I mean to bide it out."
"Who are you lecterin' to? Polly--pretty Polly!" Thus an unfeeling fiend of a boy, who hears poor Jim talking to the empty air. But Jim, if he hears, does not heed him. His mind is far away, thinking of the dreadful day of his return to his wife and her week-old baby, and his coming to know that his mishap, announced by letter the day before, had been kept from her, and was still to tell. Of the ill-judged attempt to keep it from her yet a while, and let him be beside her in the half-dark. And the fatal sudden light of a fire that blazed out, and her cry of terror: "Oh, Jim, man, what have you done to your eyes?"...
Then of yet one more forlorn hope--the ill-wrought, ill-sustained pretext that this was but a passing cloud, a mere drawback of the hour, a thing that time would remedy--so ill-sustained that even in the few short days before her death Jim's wife had come to know that his eyes, stone-blind beyond a doubt, would never laugh into her face again, would never rest with hers upon the little face she longed to show him was so like his own. And then the end, and a grave in the parish burial-ground he could not see.
Then of a dream of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and of a child's cry that reached him and called him back, even as he longed of his own free choice and will to plunge into its utter darkness. Then of a growth of ease--a sort of working ease to get through life with--and a term of reading, day by day, hour by hour, each tiniest change in the inflection of the baby's cry, until one day Lizarann, to whom it had occurred to glance round at the Universe she had been pitchforked into, burst into a not very well executed laugh at its expense, and made poor Jim for the first time fully conscious that he had a daughter.
It would be hard to tell all the struggles he went through before he could reconcile himself to a new position in life, mendicancy under pretence of match-selling. He did it at last, urged by grim necessity and Mrs. Steptoe. Perhaps we should say stung by the latter rather than urged, for her attitude was that, eyes or no eyes, if her brother wasn't going to do a hand's turn for himself, he might pack up his traps and go, brat and all! Who was he that he was to eat his sister out of house and home? And all because he was too proud to beg, forsooth! Wasn't he begging already, and wasn't she alms-giving? Yes!--only it was to be all underhanded! Nothing fair or above-board! Why should he be ashamed to ask the public for what he wasn't ashamed to take from two toiling relatives, the weaker of whom had suffered so much already from the disgusting drinking habits of the other? Jim gave way, and found excuses for his sister--he always did--in these same disgusting habits. Perhaps he was right. Anyhow, he gave way. And an old mate of his faked him up the inscription afore-mentioned, and supplied the picture of the Flying Dutchman from his narrative of the incident. And well Jim remembered how the cord he hung it from his neck by got frayed and broke, and brought back to his mind another cord his hand once grasped, as he swayed to and fro at the weather ear-ring of a topsail; and his wondering--would the frayed strands of the sheet hold under the great strain of his back-draw, or snap and fall with him into the black gulf that was hungering for him below? He could hear again the music of the gale that sang in the shrouds, feel again the downward plunge of the hull into the trough of the sea, and breathe again the air that bore its flying foam. Then he thought to himself, would not a plunge into that black gulf, then and there, have been, after all, the best thing for him? And answered his own thought without noting a strangeness in its wording: "What!--and never seen my little lass!"
But the happy fancy that Jim did not beg, but only asked, took hold of the imagination. Of course he would not beg--he would scorn to do so--he, the strong seaman, who had lived a life of danger half of those whose footsteps passed him daily would have flinched to think of! Why should he hesitate to ask of them what he would have given so freely to any one of them himself--to any one of them left in the dark? So when Lizarann said to him one day, apropos of the fact that people's fathers were their aunt's brothers, "Bridgettickses brother's a 'Orsekeeper. Are you a 'Orsekeeper?" He replied that he wasn't, exactly. But he was an Asker, to be sure! And the child, catching a sort of resemblance between the words, remembered it. And, referring to her Aunt Steptoe, got it confirmed. It served as a barrier for a time against an insight into the facts.
When poor Jim's speech was so brave of how the day was bound to go by and he would bide it out, was his whole heart in his utterance? Was there no reserve--no suppressed execration of that mysterious unsolicited Cause that had stinted him down to darkness after a short half-time of light? At that moment he was conscious of none--a moment when he felt the world about him--heard the voices of his fellow-men--felt on his face, without shrinking, the full stress of the mid-day sun, whose rays he should never see again. But how about the darkness of the night, that he had learned to know only by the loneliness and the silence? In its solitude was it not now and again almost his resolve to die, and not await another day? Almost, yes!--but never quite. Always a decision to hear just once again the voice of his little lass in the morning. If it were only this once, and he should fail in strength to bear that other day; still, let it be, for now! Just once again!
But the longest nights led each to its dawn, and poor Jim knew of each dawn by hearsay, and started off early, on all days weather forbade not too grossly, hold of Lizarann's 'and, and takin' good care not to crost only when other parties done the same, actual-like, so you might place reliance, and not get under the 'orses' 'oofs; and throughout each day that followed Jim treasured the anticipation of its end, and looked forward to the coming of his little lass to take him home. He would sit and think of what her small hand would feel like in his when the welcome hour should come for his departure; and each day as that hour came, and he found his way back to Vatted Rum Corner to wait for her, came also a short spell of tense anxiety lest he should not hear her voice this time. And then the relief, when he caught the signal he had taught her, through the noise of the traffic and the railway-whistles near at hand.
"Ye shouldn't sing out _Poy_lot, little lass," said he, when she turned up at the end of that day--the day of the two young men and the sixpence. "Ye should say Pie-lott. Else ye might be anyone else's little lass, not Father Jim's."
"I ain't," said Lizarann resolutely. "I'm Father Jim's. Pi-lot!" She threw her soul into a reproduction of her father's articulation.
"Nor yet you've no need to lose your front teeth over it. Easy does it in the end. Now again! Pi-lot!" Whereupon Lizarann repeated the word with self-restraint, and received approval. "Not for to tear up the paving-stones, lassie," added her father, explanatorily.
"What was that young varmint a-saying?" he asked, as they started to return home. He was referring to words overheard--winged words that had passed between his daughter and a boy. It was the same boy that had called him Pretty Poll, who had followed him to the street-corner; and had then gone on to greet Lizarann with the report that her Daddy was waiting to give her "what-for," for being late--which she wasn't.
Probably he was the worst boy in existence--at least, Lizarann thought he was. She was too young to appreciate his only virtue, a total absence of hypocrisy.
"Saying as it was your eyes as was out, and it didn't hurt him." Jim seemed mightily amused.
"What did you say to him over that, little lass?" said he.
"Didn't say nuffint!" And, indeed, Lizarann had not seen her way to quarrelling with two such obvious truths.
"What else was he a-saying? He said a bit more than that. I could hear him giving it mouth."
"Sayin' he'd four nuts he hadn't ate, and me to guess which 'and they was in beyont his back for a 'apenny." Lizarann then explained the proposed deal at some length.
"He's a nice young sportin' charackter! Thimble-rigging isn't in it. Why, lassie, if you had guessed right, he'd just have swopped 'em across, and took your ha'penny. He wants attendin' to with a rope's end, he does--wants his trousers spilin'. His mother she sells the fried eels and winkles, next door against the little shop where I"--Jim hesitated a minute--"where I get my shaving-soap." For Jim remembered in time that his connection with this shop was not to come to his child's ears. His board was to be kept in the background.
Lizarann wanted badly to frame a question about this boy. Were all boys nefarious whose mothers sold fried eels and winkles? And if so, had this one acquired a low moral tone by contact with fried fish, or had his parent's humble walk in life resulted from his depravity? Lizarann gave up the idea of asking this question. It was too complex. But she could get information about the barber's shop. She approached the subject indirectly.
"Bridgetticks she can read what's wrote up on shaving-shops."
"What can she read on 'em, little lass?"
"She can read Easy Shaving Twopence. And Hegg-Shampoo Fourpence. And Fresh Water Every Customer. Round in the winder in Cazenove Street."
"Brayvo, Bridgetticks! But my little lass she's going to read ever so well as Bridgetticks--ah! and a fat lot better. And larn manners belike, as well!"
"Bridgetticks said she'd learn Simpson's boy manners. Down the yard where there's a dog killed his sister's cat." Lizarann spoke evidently with some idea of joining the class. But her father had other views.
"Bridgetticks indeed! She couldn't teach manners to a biled owl, to speak of. She better give her time to studying of 'em herself. Whatever was the name she called the gentleman, lass? Tell us again."
"The long gentleman?"
"Ah!"
"She didn't call him nuffint."
"Well, then--the short gentleman."
"A Cure."
"Well!--that wasn't manners, lassie. She had ought to have called him Sir--or his name, for that matter, if she'd come by it. Couldn't she say his name with Mister? In course she could, only she didn't know it."
Lizarann stopped and stood nodding on the pavement. "Bridgetticks, she knowed his name--the short one," she said. "Because the tall gentleman, he called it him." Then the two went on again, Jim having reclaimed the hand he had let go for a moment to confirm a strange quick perception of the child's emphatic nods by touching her head.
"What was the name of the short one the tall gentleman called him by?" he asked. This was not merely to make conversation. Jim had fancied he caught a familiar sound in the name one of his young swells of the morning had applied to the other. He had not heard their reference to Tallack Street. Had he done so, he would at once have identified them as the subjects of a narrative of Lizarann's some days since. She now offered an imperfect version of the name, and Jim at once caught the connection. He had heard the name Scipio--used by the young man when he gave him his sixpence for a box of Vesuvians.
"Sippy-oh--was that it?" said he. "Well, that's a queer start too. I've seen your two gentlemen, little lass, only this morning. One of 'em, he planked down a tanner for one box. Not Sippy-oh--t'other young master. What were the two of 'em doing again down in Tallack Street?"
Lizarann braced herself for her narrative by drawing a long breath and standing with her eyes very wide open, then plunged in medias res with an oppressive sense of responsibility for historical truth, but without punctuation. She pooled all her stops, however, and by throwing in a handful at long intervals gave her lungs an opportunity of expanding.
"They was two gentleman in one hansom and I seen 'em through the open winder and Aunt Stingy she shet the winder and Bridgetticks she come lookin' in at the winder and Aunt Stingy she says I'll flat your nose for you she says an impident little hussy and she goes out for to catch hold on her and Bridgetticks she sings out Old Mother Cobblerswax and hooks it off...." All the consolidated overdue stops came in here.
Jim put in a word to steady the narrative, derived from its earlier recital: "And then you got round behind your aunt, and the gentlemen were talking to the cab-driver, hey, lassie?"
Lizarann nodded at her father exactly as if he could have seen her. However, the way she said "yass" did all the work of her nod, as well as its own, and she continued with a new lease of breath: "The driver he says 'Don't see no spremises' he says, and the gentlemen they says 'Don't see no spremises' they says, and then--'Ho here's a little girl' they says all at wunst...."
"And that was my little lass, warn't it, lassie? And she showed 'em where the board was up. That was the way of it, I lay. And whereabout was Bridgetticks the whilst?" Lizarann was becoming more reposeful in style, and was working round to a proper distribution of stops.
"Bridgetticks," she replied, "was in behind the palin's at 'Acker's, and was for biting Aunt Stingy if she laid 'ands. And Jimmy 'Acker's granny she come out, and 'Leave the child alone' she says. But the two gentleman come down out of the hansom scab and said there was no spremises, but I was a nice little girl and should have a trep'ny bit. Yass!"
"And then your aunt she looked round after you, I'll go bail. Wasn't she in it, little lass?"
"Then Aunt Stingy she giv' over, 'cos of Jimmy 'Acker's granny, and come to see. And the tall gentleman, he needn't trouble her, he says, and she kep' a little way off. And I kep' the threp'ny bit in my mouf, I did."
"So she mightn't get it?" Lizarann nodded. "And where was Bridgetticks?"
"Over acrost, feelin' up like, 'cos of Aunt Stingy."
An image passes through Jim's mind of a powerful rodent working stealthily round, clear of its enemy, to join the colloquy, and perhaps secure another threepence. His image of Bridgetticks is not a pleasing one. He doesn't believe in her sex or her girlhood--classes her with the fiendish boy at the fish-shop, and rather wishes he could let her loose on him to run him down, as one slips a dog from a leash. She would do it.
"And how came she to cut in? It was my little lassie's cake."
But Lizarann felt hurt on her friend's account. "She giv' me two apples," she said, and left the point, as one sure to be understood. Then she continued: "The gentlemen wanted for to know our names, and Bridgetticks said not if took down. So the gentleman put the pencil away and she says Bridgetticks and I says Lizarann Toopland."
"Right you were! And then what did the gentleman say?"
"Not to shout both at once."
"Which did ye like best, little lass--which gentleman?" But the child is uncertain on this point. Being pressed, she admits a tendresse for the one called Scipio; but it appears that Bridgetticks has condemned him on account of his jaw, pointing to a certain sententiousness of style, which has already been in evidence in this story. Her discrimination of him as a Cure, too, will show those who are familiar with the use of this term that she placed a low value on his reflections.
Her father, having certainly spoken with these two gentlemen, felt some curiosity about what they could want in Tallack Street. His having spoken with them himself had, of course, given them an interest for him he had not felt before. But inquiry of a child not seven years old has to be conducted cautiously. If too hard pushed, she will invent. "What did ye make out they came for, lassie?" he asked.
"Spremises," was the reply, given with confidence. But this seemed ill-grounded when she added, "What does spremises mean, daddy?"
"Houses with bills in the winder, lass. Sure! But didn't they never say where they come from, nor what they wanted?"
"Bridgetticks she knew."
"Where did she say they came from?"
"Smallporks Hospital." Jim wondered how on earth Lizarann's friend had struck on this vein of invention, but he only expressed the mildest doubt of its accuracy lest he should upset his informant. As it was, he disturbed her slightly. "She ain't tellin' no lies," she added.
"P'raps it warn't so bad as all that come to, lassie. P'raps it was only Guy's or 'Tholomoo's?" But the little person was not prepared to accept any composition that threw doubt on Bridgetticks. She might have questioned her statements personally, even to the extent of calling her a story. But she felt bound to defend her, even against her father. So she nailed her colours, so to speak, to the Smallpox Hospital. That was to be the very hospital, and no other, that these two gentlemen were connected with. She gave illustrations of untruthfulness, as shown by contemporaries.
"Jimmy 'Acker he's a liar. And Uncle Steptoe he's a liar. Aunt Stingy says so. Bridgetticks she ain't. She speaks the troof, she does. Yass! She says so." Very open eyes and a nod.
"In coorse she does, and in coorse she knows." Then poor Jim wondered to himself what this young person was like that his little lass had such faith in. He continued: "What's she like to look at, by way of describing of her now?"
Lizarann had never described anybody, so far. That is to say, not consciously. She might have done it without knowing it was description. But she knew quite well what her father meant, and braced herself up to authorship.
"She's very 'ard, all over," she said, as a first item. "And she's awful strong. She is--yass! And she don't stick out nowhere neither." A form the reverse of svelte is impressed upon her hearer's inner vision. But she repents of the last item, and adds, "Only her nose!"
"What's her colour of hair--black colour?--yaller colour?"
"T'int no colour at all, Daddy."
"Just plain hair-colour--is that it?"
"Yass! Pline hair-colour."
"What's her eyes?" But this is too difficult. Lizarann gives it up. To say plain eye-colour would be poor and unoriginal. However, particulars could be given of Bridgettickses eyes, apart from questions of their colour.
"She can squint, she can. Yass--acrost!"
"She don't want to it--not she!"
"Don't she want to it, Daddy?" A timid expression of doubt this. "I said--I said--to Bridgetticks...."
"Hurry up, little lass! What was it ye said?"
"I said--to Bridgetticks--I said the boys said she couldn't be off of it, they did. That's what the boys said."
"And she said they was liars, I'll go bail. Hay, little lass?"
"She said they was liars. Yass!" And then the difficulties of negotiating the passage across Cazenove Street, where they had by this time arrived, stopped the conversation.
When the couple were safely landed on the opposite pavement, talk went on again. Jim's image of Bridgetticks had not been improved by Lizarann's description. And an incident of her narrative had caused him to picture to himself a terrifying vision of her.
"She must have looked a queer un, lassie, flattening her nose against the winder-pane."
"Aunt Stingy said she'd welt her down fine if she could once catch holt."
"Your aunt don't seem to have thought her a beauty. Not with her nose against the glass! What did you think yourself, lassie?"
"I didn't seen her." Her head shook a long continuous negative.
"How do ye make that out, lass?"
"We ply at bein' oarposite sides of the winder-pine. Her outside--me in!"
"Well, then--o' course you saw her, lassie. You've got eyes in your head."
"I was a-flotting of my own nose against the glast, inside, too clost to see. Right oarposite--yass!" And then explained, at some expense of words, that this gyme, or game, was played by two little girls, or little boys, or a sample of each, jamming their noses one against the other as it were with the cold, unpleasant glass between. The gratification of doing this, whatever it was, might be enhanced and intensified by a similar treatment of their tongue-tips. This last variation caused Lizarann to end up with: "Outside tistés of rine. Inside tistés of cleanin' windows."
"I don't see no kissin' to be got out of that," said Jim. But the inventors of this game had evidently never anticipated its adoption by grown-up persons, and did not advise it. Their low natures could not enter into it. It was, however, made clear why Bridgetticks was invisible during an innings--if the term is permissible.
* * * * *
But oh, to think of it! Poor Jim had never seen his little lass, whose chatter had supplied him with a vivid image--albeit, perhaps, a false one--of her friend of ten years old. Her voice and touch were all he had to live for; but the only image of her he could get was from a grudging admission of his sister's that she might grow to be like her mother in time, but she would never have her looks. These looks were only admitted by Mrs. Steptoe for strategic purposes--videlicet, the cheapening of her brother's one possession and emphasizing of his losses. She may have had no defined intention of giving him pain, but the attitude of thought implied formed part of a scheme of Jeremiads her life was devoted to fostering and maturing. The looks of Lizarann's mother were the only pivot on which discussion of the child's own could turn naturally and easily. The embittered and unsympathetic disposition of her aunt made communication about them on other lines difficult or impossible to poor Jim.
But he treasured in his heart the idea that one day he would meet with some congenial soul whom he could take into his confidence, and petition for a description of what his little lass was really like. Unless, indeed, when she grew older, she was able to tell him what her image in a mirror resembled better than she had done when once or twice he had tried that way of eliciting information. For on those occasions Lizarann had at first shown symptoms of becoming what her aunt called a little giggling, affected chit, and had only been able to report that she looked "like Loyzarann in the glast," and then had grown uneasy, betrayed a tendency towards panic, and hid her face on her father when he became earnest, and begged her for his sake to tell him what she really looked like. She couldn't understand it at all, and may have had misgivings that she was being entrapped into some sort of ritual of a Masonic nature. So Jim had to wait for enlightenment from herself, and looked forward to the day when she should become more old and serious. Meanwhile what would he not have given for one little glimmer to help his imperfect image of what his little lass was like, now--now that her childhood was there?
But the darkness was upon him for all time. And the world that once was his to see had vanished--vanished with the last image his eyes had known; the quay at Cape Town in the blazing sun, the Dutch-built houses on the hot hill-side, and Table Mountain dark against the sky; and all the wide sea, a blaze of white beneath the blue, whose strongest glare might never reach his cancelled sight again. And there--so Jim believed, on the strength of a legend his informant may have invented on the spot--when the winds were at their worst round the Cape of Storms, might still be seen the source of all his evil, the Phantom Ship that had blasted his eyesight and made him what he had become. So fixed was this article of Jim's faith that it is not exaggeration to say that he drew comfort from the unending doom of her shadowy crew. Come what might to him, he always had this consolation, that as long as the sea should last, there was no hope of rest for the soul of the Flying Dutchman. It was something, if it wasn't much; and he told and retold the tale to his little lass, who was grieved on his behalf; but had somewhere, in the unrevengeful background of her mind, a chance thought of pity now and again for the unhappy seaman who was the cause of his misfortune.
Chapter III
OF ROYD HALL, AND ITS LITERARY GUEST WHO HAD AN IMPOSSIBLE WIFE
The lady who had shown an interest in Lizarann at the Dale Road Schools was the wife of Sir Murgatroyd Arkroyd, of Royal in Rankshire and Drum in Banffshire, and even more places. The young man who had bought Jim's matches and returned his change was their eldest son, William Rufus Arkroyd. His friend, whom he called Scipio, who was his college chum at Cambridge a year or so since, and had remained his inseparable companion, was on this particular day starting with him to pay an autumn visit to his paternal mansion, Royd Hall, about seven miles from Grime, where the new Translucent Cast Steel Foundries are.
The two young men got a carriage to themselves, and played picquet all the way to Furnivals, the little station where you get out for Royd and Thanes Castle, and the omnibus meets you. Because you are the sort probably that omnibuses meet. And it may be considered to have met William Rufus and Scipio on this occasion, but only platonically; for they rode to the house in a dog-cart that awaited them. However, the omnibus had the consolation of being ridden in by Mr. Arkroyd's man Schott, who came on in it with such luggage as would not go under a seat amenable only to card-cases or the like.
The model groom, Bullett, who had driven the trap to the station, had just time to establish himself on the back-seat, when the model mare was off at a spin, and an agricultural population, whose convictions and diet changed very little since the days of William the Norman, were abasing themselves in a humiliating manner unworthy of the age we live in--uncovering male heads and bobbing female skirts--at the doors of cottages whose hygienic arrangements were a disgrace to a Christian country and a reflection on civilization. So said the Grime Sentinel, in an editorial; and, as it spoke as though the editor had tried all these arrangements and found them wanting, no doubt it was right.
"Now, what have you and my affectionate brother been talking about all the way here?" Thus Judith, the sister of the one she is not addressing.
Scipio replies at leisure. He is evidently accustomed to being patronized by this handsome and self-possessed young lady, who is two years his senior, and speaks as to a junior. But, though she patronizes him, she waits until he chooses to answer.
"Your affectionate brother and myself, Miss Arkroyd, are so accustomed to each other's society, after a long residence in college together, that it is only on rare and special occasions that we exchange any remarks at all. We agreed some time since that the edge of conversation--that, I believe, was the expression--was taken off when each of the parties to it is always definitely certain what the other is going to say."
"Nonsense!--ridiculous boy! Do you expect me to believe that you two rode all that way and never spoke?"
Scipio reconsiders, and takes exception to his own speech, with the air of a person drawing on a reserve of veracity, a higher candour: "Perhaps I have overstated the case. We played picquet all the way from Euston. Picquet, as you are aware, involves an occasional interchange of monosyllables...."
"I know. One for his heels and two for his nob. Go on."
"Excuse me. Allow me to correct a misapprehension. The expressions you have quoted belong to another game--cribbage."
"Does it matter? Do go on with what you were saying ... 'involves an occasional interchange of monosyllables'...." The young lady is a little impatient, and taps.
"Which can scarcely be regarded as conversation." He completes the sentence with deliberation. He seems to take a pleasure in doing so, simply because of her impatience. "But with the exception of allusions to the game, I can recall no remark or observation whatever, wise or otherwise."
Whereupon the young lady, seeming to give him up as hopeless, calls to her brother in an adjoining room: "Will!" and he replies: "What? Anything wanted?"
"Yes!--come and make Lord Felixthorpe reasonable." From which it is clear that Scipio is a lord, or has a right to be called one. He is somebody's son, supposably.
This conversation is taking place in the drawing-room at Royd, where the two young men arrived just in time to delay dinner half-an-hour, that they might have time to dress. At Royd, undue hurry about anything was unknown, and Mr. Schott had arranged young Mr. Arkroyd's shirt-studs in his shirt, black silk stockings, coat, waistcoat, and trousers in a most beautiful pattern on his bed almost before his apologies to his mother were over for giving the wrong time of his train. He ought to have arrived an hour sooner, and Bullett and the dog-cart--or, rather, its mare--had been kicking their heels all that time at Furnival Station, enjoying the great luxury of enforced idleness, with a grievance against its cause. However, it was all right by now, and everyone who had not eaten too many macaroons at tea had dined extremely well.
"Smoke a cigarette," said William Rufus to his sister, as he settled down on the split fauteuil. "Never mind Sibyl!" She disclaimed Sibyl's influence, and lighted the cigarette he gave her at his own. He continued: "I can't make Scip reasonable. Nobody can."
"He says you and he never exchanged a word, and that you played cribbage in the train all the way without speaking."
"It was picquet. I don't know cribbage."
"Oh dear!--how trying you boys are! As if that mattered! The point is, did you speak, or didn't you?"
Whereupon each of the young men looked at the other, and said: "Did we speak, or didn't we?"
"I can wait," said the young lady; and waited with a passiveness that had all the force of activity.
"I understand"--thus Scipio, more deliberately than ever--"that technical remarks relating to the game are excluded by hypothesis."
"Yes!" from the catechist.
"Stop a bit, Scip. We did speak. We spoke about the blind beggar."
"I knew you were talking nonsense. You talked all the way. But who was the blind beggar?"
"A friend of Scip's--at least, a father of one of his young ladies."
Miss Arkroyd looked amused more than curious. "You haven't told us of this one," said she. "Or have you?"
"I have had nothing official to communicate, so far. Possibly a mere passing tendresse. I have only known the young lady a very short time. I will promise further information as soon as there is anything to communicate."
Miss Arkroyd continued to look at the speaker as though to find out his real meaning, half in doubt, half taking him au sérieux. But her brother struck in, saying: "Nothing interesting, Judith. This one's too young, and might be unsuitable from other points of view--eh, Scip?"
"The family connection," Scipio answers reflectively, "may have drawbacks. Nevertheless, I find, when I indulge in the position, hypothetically, of a son-in-law, that I do not shrink from the image of the relation I have created. It has a sort of sense about it of the starboard watch, and keeping a good look-out on foc'sles, and knowing how to splice cables. By-the-by, Will, this is an accomplishment that might prove useful in my family--splicing cables, I mean. I am certain that we can't, at present, any of us. Even my half-brother, though his grandfather--on his mother's side--is an Admiral, cannot splice a cable...."
"Never mind the cables! Go on about the blind beggar."
Her brother, as one who knows his friend's disposition to wander, supplies consecutive narrative: "The blind beggar's that sailor at the railway. Most likely you've seen him.... No?"--replying to a disclaiming headshake.--"Well!--take him for granted. The child's his child."
"What child?"
"You've seen her yourself, I think; or the same thing--the madre has. You remember?--in that Tallack Street place, on the Remunerative Artisans' Domicile Company's estate. You told us of it yourself, you know."
"I know Tallack Street perfectly well. It's the place where there was land for a factory that I thought would do for the New Idea. Have you seen it?"
"Why, of course! Scip and I went over next day. Well--it's that little girl." But Judith has slummed so many little girls in Tallack Street, all alike, that she can't recall any special one. She remembers the front teeth of one very plainly. Her brother also remembers Bridgetticks--not a young lady easily forgotten, clearly. But he has forgotten her name.
"Yes, I know her. So does Scip. She called him a Cure. But not that one--a younger child. I rather think our mother knows something about her." He leans his head well back towards his mother in the next room--sees its ceiling, perhaps, as he blows his cigarette-smoke straight upwards--and calls to her, "Madre!" The Italian word may be some mere family habit, without reason. A perceptive guest in the next room makes a mental note of it as a useful point in his next novel. For he is a literary celebrity. Lady Arkroyd answers: "Yes, dear, what?" She looks quite round the high back of the chair she sits in, and speaks fairly towards her son. He continues to throw his voice back over his head to her:
"What was the name of the queer kid that said her father was 'an Asker'? You told us about her, you know.... At the school place, down by Tallack Street...."
"I know. Her father's blind, and she leads him about. Be quiet, and don't ask, and perhaps I shall remember the name." Lady Arkroyd shuts her eyes over the job and waits on Memory. It may take time. Her son decides that he can listen just as well with his head down, and becomes normal. Presently his mother reports: "I think it was Steptoe--no!--not Steptoe. Eliza Ann Copeland, Adeline Fossett's schoolroom." If you look back to where Lizarann made this lady's acquaintance, you will see that there was underlying method in the seeming-disjointed action of her memory.
Her son replies, "Yes--that child"; and adds, "All right--that'll do," meaning that he has now got all the information wanted for the moment. So the perceptive guest infers, and listens with interest for the use he is going to make of it. But he loses the thread of the conversation; for, just as he is going to speak, the sister says to Scipio, "What did you say 'er' for?"--meaning, why did you begin and stop?
"The expression," his lordship replies with intense deliberation, "was an involuntary prefix to a statement I was preparing to make concerning the patronymic of the little girl who----" He stops dead on the pronoun, without finishing the sentence; then continues: "I need go no farther, especially as I foresee a fresh confirmation forming on the lips of my dear friend William Rufus of the view taken of my personal character by the other little-girl-who. But perhaps the name of the first little-girl-who may be taken as decided on. In that case I need not adduce my evidence."
"Do shut up, Scip," is the comment of William Rufus. "The other little girl spoke the truth. You are a Cure--not the least doubt of it."
"What is a Cure?" says Judith. "I don't know. But please don't shut up; never mind Will! What was it you were going to say?"
"Merely this:--When your intractable brother and myself visited Tallack Street, having previously interviewed Mr. Illingworth, the courteous secretary of the Remunerative...."
"Do get along, Scip!" from Mr. Arkroyd.
"My dear Will, I assure you that your impatience only defeats its own object. If you will balance the time gained by skipping passages in my statement--which may in the end prove essential to the context--against the time lost in administering verbal stimulus to the speaker, you will find--if I am not mistaken--that the latter exceeds the former."
"All right, old chap! I give up. Go ahead!"
"I shall have to go and talk to the new visitors. You had better get on." These speeches come simultaneously from his two hearers; the last speaker with her fine eyes fixed on a wrist-watch, little larger than the iris of either. Scipio accelerates with docility.
"After getting the particulars of the land and buildings from Illingworth, we drove round by Tallack Street to look at the site. We always make a point of seeing everything. Illingworth was not justified in saying that a small shed on the land, in the last stages of disintegration, could be utilized for a motor-garage ... but never mind that! We are at present concerned with the name of the little-girl-who. The plummy little dark-eyed one, Will--not that shrill little fiend. Well!--when we arrived at Tallack Street, and could see nothing the least resembling a suitable site for a factory--or, indeed, anything else--your accomplished brother, Miss Arkroyd, who cannot get in or out of a hansom without breaking his knee-caps, urged upon me the propriety of descending and inquiring at the Robin Hood. The Robin Hood was congenial to me--the sort of pub I always frequent when I have a choice. It had a picture of Robin dressed like a member of what I always suppose to be a benefit-club, which extends to me, when I sit at windows, a long pole with a collection-box, suggesting an inversion of the way we fed bears in our youth...." His hearers become restive.
"This is irrelevant," says the brother. And the sister looked again at her wrist.
"I am aware of it. I will not detain Miss Arkroyd long at the Robin Hood. I will merely note the fact that it had a water-trough for horses, and a space in front--it is in the main road, just as you reach Tallack Street--and that it is a House of Call for Plasterers. I mention this in case...."
"In case any of us should plaster unexpectedly? Do you feel that you wish to plaster, Will?"
"I might. Sibyl probably will, sooner or later. Go on, Scip.... Yes, we interrupted you--admitted!... Now go on."
"In the private bar of the Robin Hood--for it boasts a public and private bar, though it stops short of making parade of a saloon bar--I encountered a cobbler drinking a tumblerful of spirits. He was becoming a cobblerful of tumblerfuls...."
"I'm sure I know that man," Judith says, in brackets. "It was the one that said he was 'mine very truly, Robert Steptoe.' Never mind!--go on...."
"But he was not too drunk to tell me that if I kept my eyes open I should see a blooming board at the end of the street. There wasn't any too much reading on it now, the boys having aimed at it successfully ever since he came to Rose Cottage--'ouse on the right--but he took it a board was always a board, reading or no. I could see for myself, by looking. It warn't trespassers; he knew that.... Do not be impatient. I am coming to the gist of my communication.... Shortly after leaving the bar of the Robin Hood, I heard some boys singing a monotonous chant. A name was frequently repeated in it; it sounded like:
'Lizarann Coupland's Father begs for 'apence Just round the corner Down by the gasworks....'
And so on over and over again. I inquired of one small boy whose father it was that begged for halfpence, but he turned the conversation, and suggested that I should give him a farden kike. However, another one repeated the name gratis; and though he was too young to be quite intelligible I was satisfied that the name was Eliza Ann Copeland or Coupland."
"Why couldn't you tell us that straight off, Lord Felixthorpe?" says Judith. To which the narrator replies with a sweet smile, "My inherent prolixity, no doubt." She says absently to the wrist-watch, "No doubt!" and then, looking up at the speaker, illogically asks, "What was the rest of the story? Go on."
Her brother protests: "Come, Judith, be reasonable! You're just like the people that author-chap has been telling us about downstairs ... people who complain that his books are too long, and then ask for more. He says he's badgered for sequels, and untold gold wouldn't induce him to bring an old character into a new book."
"He's perfectly right. Anyhow, I am sure he always finishes a story when he begins it. I want the rest of what happened. Only I want this one cut short--not too prosy, please! Did you give that little boy the farthing cake?"
"I gave him a halfpenny. He ignored my application for change, and walked away hand-in-hand with his friend towards a shop. I accompanied the cab on foot to the end of Tallack Street, where we found the blooming board, and decided on its illegible character. But there was no doubt the piece of land was the one Illingworth had shown us on the map. The fictitious motor-garage was a place that could only have been a source of danger to rash intruders. We exclaimed together that there were no premises, and the cabman endorsed our opinion. At this juncture an exacerbated female rushed from a doorway to intercept and chastise, if possible, a little girl about ten years old, who had been peering at her through a window on the ground-floor. This little girl slipped through an impassable orifice and got away, shouting derision, but pursued by the woman...."
"Who was more than half afraid of her." Thus Mr. Arkroyd parenthetically.
"I agree with you. However, she left her door open, and the little girl, whom I think we may consider to be identified as Eliza Ann Coupland, came out timidly, and sucked a corner of her neck-handkerchief in our immediate neighbourhood. She seemed to regard the clash between the other little girl and her mother as normal, and appeared to court conversation with us...."
"It's not her mother. It's her aunt. I know the people." The interruption is Judith's. "But go on."
"Her aunt. Our conversation with her was handicapped by her shyness; also by her objection to removing the handkerchief from her mouth. But she appeared to be attracted to us by a kind of fascination, showing itself in a fixed gaze in a direction contrary to the pull of the handkerchief. Her aunt's injunction to her to put it out of her mouth and answer the gentleman led the gentleman to prevail on the aunt to withdraw. We then understood her to refer us to a friend, Bridget Hicks, for local information...."
"Exactly. And Bridget Hicks called you a Cure."
"That is so. With what justice I am not in a position to say, without a more exact acquaintance with the meaning of the term. Bridget Hicks was the little girl who had fled before the wrath of the aunt. She joined her friend on witnessing the discomfiture of that lady by the tactics of your accomplished brother, who, I think, impressed her as Royalty."
"Very well, then!--it comes to this." It is Judith who is reporting progress. "The last time you spoke in the train was about a blind beggar whose little girl walks him about, and lives in that abominable slum papa has allowed to be built on the Cazenove estate, where I sent you because there was a board with something about vacant premises suitable for a factory on it. Why couldn't you say so at once?"
"May I be pardoned for suggesting," Scipio replies with a reinforcement of his sententious manner, which had lapsed slightly, "that, had I done so, a lengthy cross-examination would have been necessary to put my hearers in possession of details I have been able to supply."
His friend seems to think there is something in this. "Just consider, Judith," he says. "If Scip had cut himself down, as you suggest, you would have known nothing about Eliza Ann's neck-handkerchief. I consider that it speaks volumes."
"Scip, as you call him, could have thrown it in."
And Miss Arkroyd, who is more tall, impressive, and handsome than her mother, collects herself, which spreads over a great deal of fauteuil, to join the party in the other room. Her brother and his friend follow her.
The house-party in the room adjoining--that is, the large drawing-room with the Tintoret; perhaps you have been at Royd, and know it?--had been making a good deal of noise, considering the connection. One mustn't laugh too loud, if it's to be high-tension sweetness and light. This thought passed through the mind of Mr. Alfred Challis, better known to the world as "Titus Scroop," the great Author, who was one of the party; it was to him we referred as the perceptive guest. But he could not blame himself for causing any of the too-loud laughs; because, whenever he thought of a good thing, instead of speaking it out as he used to do when he was an Accountant, he kept it to himself and made a mental note of it for copy. But when he was clear in his mind, that a thing was not good enough for copy, he revealed it; and then the company laughed gently and obligingly, because he was a great Author. He felt sorry usually.
Mrs. Challis wasn't there. Mr. Challis used to visit at distinguished houses alone. But there was nothing against her. Discussion of whether she couldn't be asked this time always admitted that. But it invariably ended in a decision that Mrs. Challis was an Impossible Person--although Mrs. Candour had made every inquiry, and there was nothing whatever against her. "Still," said Lady Arkroyd to the Duchess of Rankshire, "even if there had been!..." And her Grace, predisposed to forgiveness of antecedents by native good-nature and a flawless record, saw regretfully that even then the lady would have been welcome, if only she had been Possible. Not being so, and being also, report said, huffy, she had never come to pass in polite society. Her husband believed he believed she was just as happy at home because a working hypothesis of life was de rigueur. She had certainly been almost rude to Lady Arkroyd on the occasion of a conciliatory visit; misunderstanding may have helped, but one thing is certain--she either was not asked to Royd this time or refused the invitation.
As to other folks, there were several. Only it was not easy to say which was which; it often isn't when there are several. They have to be left alone to assume identities, and a certain percentage succeeds. The balance dies away. And then one of them afterwards writes a daring story, or ventilates a startling theory, or commits an interesting murder. And there he was, all that time, at the Simpkins's garden-party and you never knew! Were you also--you yourself--a nonentity some of the others were thinking of as a Person-at-a-Party, et præterea nihil? And is one of them now thinking to _him_self--dear him!--was that little, snuffy, unobtrusive chap really the author of this remarkable work, which appeals to the better side of my nature, and has scarcely a dull passage from beginning to end? Meaning, of course--you! And just to think!--he lost his chance, and may never get another. How sorry you feel for him!
These reflections are really in the story, because they were passing through the mind of Mr. Challis while a lady who had been asked to sing Carpathian Ballads was making up her mind which she would sing. In these philosophizings of his--especially the last one--may be detected the disagreeable sneering tone you never would have suspected him of. You would have thought him an easy-going chap--no more. It was there, though, and it affected his mind more or less all through the Carpathian Ballads. Whenever he was thrown on his own resources for a few minutes, the disagreeable sneering tone was apt to be audible to himself in his communings with his innermost soul. On this occasion, his innermost soul, being left alone with him for a short time, took occasion to decide that his host was a pompous old Ass. All these heavy landed proprietors were pompous Asses, more or less. The Woman--thus it referred to the lady of the house--was more interesting, of course. Women were. But she was a worldling, and a Philistine at heart, for all this pretence of worshipping Art and Letters and Song. As for the son, he gave himself airs; but it, the soul, wouldn't say anything against him because his cigars were undeniable. And the soul shared its owner's--if, indeed, he could call his soul his own!--appreciation of good 'baccy. The young Lord, it decided, was not a bad sample of his depraved class--would find his level in Parliament and be Under-Secretary of something, sometime. But he would have to learn to shout louder and speak faster. As for the two young women, the soul's owner had really only just distinguished one from the other. As for the music, the singer couldn't sing ballads, whatever else she could sing. She was nothing much to look at; but the eldest daughter had a fine throat and shoulders. Only nowadays you never could tell how much was real. As for the others, he hadn't made them out yet. Lady Arkroyd had been civil to him at dinner, certainly. But then she had invited him. He had a vague sense that he was regarded as her property, and that the others all shirked responsibility on his account, and that he was, in fact, to them an outsider. Anyway, it was bad form of the son and his friend and the pair of shoulders, to go away and talk in the back room, and take no notice of--well!--of himself, for instance. At which point his innermost soul turned traitor--rounded on him, and accused him of allowing his disagreeable sneering tone to get the better of him--of giving way to ill-temper, in fact.
Perhaps these presents will be read by someone who has had a similar experience as a newcomer in a great house. He or she may also have found out that there is honey as well as wormwood, frankincense as well as assafoetida, to be met with in such a position, even as did Mr. Alfred Challis, the eminent novelist.
For, the Carpathian ballads coming to an end, that gentleman found himself suddenly being apprized, by the owner of the shoulders, that she had been longing for a word--with so eminent a writer--all the evening. And there was a question she was dying to ask him. Only they would have plenty of time to talk about that to-morrow. When was his next book coming out?... not till the spring?... oh dear! And what was the title?... "Titus Scroop" always had such interesting titles.... What? Not decided on? The fine eyes that went with the shoulders seemed surprised at this. "No doubt," said the Author, "the novel is as anxious as anyone to know what its title is going to be." This wasn't worth keeping for copy. The lady laughed the laugh that concedes that a joke has been made or meant, not the laugh of irresistible appreciation. What did that matter? Mr. Challis's ill-humour was being charmed away. Probably some student of human nature has noticed that it is not very material that the flattery of a good-looking woman should be sincere, provided mankind gets enough of it. Mr. Challis suspected that he was being soothed, and "Titus Scroop" spoken of in inverted commas, as compensation for having been left to choose between the company of other males and no company at all. But still, he was being soothed. No more words about it! Mr. Challis acquitted the shoulders, and even the mass of rich black hair, of any assistance from Art; and when the party broke up for the night, went to his couch contented.
Having, as it were, obsessed this gentleman, in order to get a clear view of this autumn's house-party at Royd, we may as well make further use of him and peep over his shoulder as he writes his first letter to his impossible wife in the cretonne bedroom at the end of the passage where the German Baroness saw the ghost--you know that story, of course? Oh dear, what a lot of candles one does light to write letters by in other people's houses when one hasn't got to pay for them!
This is what Mr. Challis is writing now: "... I like the talky chap better than the son and heir. He's a lord. They neither of them take to me because I'm not 'Varsity. I came down in the train with them, only not the same carriage. I rode third, of course; there were no seconds." The writer felt that it was very clever of the thirds to be thirds at all when there were no seconds, but decided not to write it--as too subtle for the intellect of his impossible she--and wrote on: "I saw them playing cards in a smoking-carriage, and recognized the son and heir by his portrait. It isn't a bit like him. There's a fat pink politician here, with little eyes, who talks thirty-two to the dozen. His name is Ramsey Tomes. He pinned my host as he was coming from the dinner-table, and detained him ever so long. We heard the rumble of his rounded periods afar"--will she understand that? thought the writer--"long after everyone else had followed the womankind to the drawing-room. However, they came up in time for the music, and I heard Mr. Tomes assuring Sir Murgatroyd that his respect for that Bart was so intense that he would reconsider the whole of his political opinions forthwith, but without the slightest expectation of changing one jot or one tittle of them." Here the writer abstained, consideratively, with his pen delayed over the inkstand, from inditing that he had never met with a "tittle" out of the company of its invariable jot. That would be too deep for this wife of his. He brought the pen slowly into the arena again. "Sir Murgatroyd repeated the same sentiment in several different words. As for all the other people, I must tell about them gradually, or leave them till I come home. The younger daughter, Sibyl--that's how to spell her name--not Sybil, remember--strikes me as a little waspish. Judith, the other, is a tall, handsome woman, with a figure expensive to dress but a little prepotente." He let this word stand, having written it, though he felt sure that the impossible one's Italian would not cover it. He did not mind leaving her to choose a meaning for it; it franked him of any responsibility. Then he thought he had written enough, and ended up: "You need not be uneasy about my neuralgia. I feel better already and shall have a hot bath first thing in the morning.--Your loving mate, A. C." But he added an amends for an omission--"Kiss the kids from me."
Then he betrayed further uneasiness of conscience by saying to himself: "After all, she's much better at home with the babies. She would never get on among these people." Whether it occurred to the good gentleman that he had it in his power to alter the position of the pieces on the board we do not know. If it did, the idea soon vanished behind a speculation whether the next guest after him would have a new acreage of clean sheet and pillow all to himself; and if not, what a lot of washing went for nothing! He almost wished he was a chimney-sweep, to make it valid.
Chapter IV
OF MISS ARKROYD AND HER AVIARY. HOW MR. CHALLIS WALKED IN THE GARDEN WITH HER. OF MR. TRIPTOLEMUS WRAXALL. AND OF HOW MR. CHALLIS WROTE TO HIS WIFE
It is bewildering to reflect on the number of avenues open to Society by which to approach its own final perfection. And disappointing, too, when a start has been made along some promising one, to come so soon to a parting of the ways, with never a signpost--not so much as a stray uncrucified Messiah for a guide--as the night falls over the land. For even so, each last new Theory of Perfectibility, each panacea for the endemics that afflict us, seems to pass from the glory of its dawn to the chill hours of its doubt; and its Apostles fall away and change their minds, and its subscribers discontinue their subscriptions, and it becomes out of date. And those who have not lain low, like Br'er Fox, but have committed themselves past all recall to its infallibility, are sorry because they cannot remind us that they said so all along, only they were never paid the slightest attention to.
It is possible that some such perceptions passed through Mr. Challis's reflective mind in the course of next day at Royd. He began to find out that he was in a sort of hornet's nest of Reformers, every one of them anxious to point out avenues of salvation for Society. For Sir Murgatroyd, who was the soul of liberality towards every doctrine, political, religious, or social, that he had no prejudice against, liked nothing better than to crowd his house full of reforming theorists. Was he not himself one, and the author of a pamphlet called "The Higher Socialism: An Essay towards a Better Understanding of the Feudal System"? He therefore welcomed with splendid hospitality every advocate of every doctrine that was undoubtedly new, only two conditions being complied with. One was that if it was a New Morality it should be possible to enter into its details without shocking--suppose we say--a hardened reader of Laurence Sterne; and the other that it should not countenance, palliate, advocate, encourage, support, or lend adhesion to his especial bête noire, the Americanization of our Institutions. On this particular occasion a fine bag of neo-archs--how apologize for such a word?--had been secured by him during his summer holiday; and when Mr. Challis made his appearance at the breakfast-table next morning, he was buttonholed away from its beautiful clean damask by a brace of Thinkers, each anxious to communicate his Thoughts, and, if possible, entangle the sympathies of a powerful pen "Titus Scroop" was known to possess.
It is annoying to be interrupted when you are making up your mind what you'll have; and then you take poached eggs when you want filleted plaice, or vice-versa. Mr. Challis showed intrepidity, saying to a disciple of the learned German reformer Graubosch: "I make a point of never listening to anything worth hearing at breakfast." It was a clever repulse; but committed him to capitulation to Graubosch later. He succeeded, but with a like reservation, in escaping from an advocate of a really formidable system of Assurance which would have widespread effects on Society, by saying--as though the first few words of its exponent had gone home to him--"You and I must talk that out over a game of billiards." The fact is this gentleman had not been sufficiently congratulated about his last book, so far, by the ladies of the family; and he felt a strong bias towards being flattered by Miss Arkroyd particularly, although in his letter to his wife he had spoken with coldness--ostentatious, and he knew it--of this young lady's fascinations. So he was already scheming in his heart to get her in a corner by herself, where she would be able to express her wonder at his insight into things no one else--except she and he, presumably--knew anything about. He was perceptibly conscious that the short interview between himself and this very good-looking young lady, the evening before, had lacked reference to his insight, and that recognition in that quarter would be pleasant.
It is a little difficult to saunter away from Thinkers who are convinced that you will be interested in their Thoughts, especially if you have given any of them the right to begin, "Referring to what we were saying yesterday, etc."; or, "I have been thinking over that apparent contradiction, etc." But it can be done, with tact. Mr. Challis had not a perfectly clear record of avoidance of Philosophy: his buttonholers of the morning could have pleaded justifications. So he felt diplomatic as he got into another coat because the sun was quite hot in the garden, and then came down the other stairs, where he was sure to meet nobody, and so through the kitchen-gardens to the Inigo Jones orangery that was now an aviary. That was where Miss Arkroyd had said she was going--not to him, but to someone else in his hearing. So clearly so that it was almost as good as if he hadn't heard, but had approached her by accident, when he came upon her out of a side-avenue of clipped hedges. By that time he was sauntering quite naturally, with a cigar in his mouth, just begun. This was as it should be.
"Have you seen my green parroquets?" said the lady.
"I haven't noticed any. Are they loose in the garden?" As though they would have been! But Mr. Challis wasn't in earnest.
"Not that I know of! Did you see any?" She had taken him quite seriously, and he had to explain.
"It was my ill-judged facetiousness," said he. "I meant I had been nowhere except in the garden."
"Oh, I see! You quite frightened me. They are such nice little people. Come in and look at them." But Mr. Challis felt that he would have to practise a certain discretion in his accustomed modes of speech, one of which was a perverse gravity over an obvious absurdity. But he had long given up expecting insight into this from Marianne, the impossible wife. Why should he, then, from this young woman, to whom he and his ways were quite a novelty? Besides, we had to consider the individualities of that strange creature, the human Toff. Mr. Challis reflected that absurd tropes and inversions, without a smile, are the breath of life to cab and bus men. Perhaps William the Norman never put his royal tongue in his cheek: it may have been contrary to the Feudal System.
The little parroquets didn't wait for their proprietor and this new gentleman to come into their palace. The moment they heard them they came with a wild rush into an outside cage. But, being out, they took no notice of their disturbers--none whatever! They conversed about them, clewed side by side on a long perch, with a stunning and unhesitating volubility that made the brain reel; a shrill, intolerable prestissimo of demisemiquavers on one note that pierced the drum of the ear like a rain of small steel shot. They had come to so exactly the same conclusion, so it seemed, as they all repeated it at once, first to right, then to left--had so precisely the same opinion about their visitors, that it was hardly necessary to dwell upon it so long, Mr. Challis thought.
"Are they sweet, or are they not?" was what his companion said.
Challis admitted the sweetness--or possible sweetness--of their dispositions. But he took exception to their voices. He would have preferred these to be more like Cordelia's. The nice little people kept up such a fire of comment, although Miss Arkroyd was now supplying them with cherries, that Challis could hardly hear what she was saying. But he gathered that it was eulogy of the way in which he had referred to the voice of Cordelia and King Lear's description of it, in one of his novels. Only it seemed to him that she was putting the saddle on the wrong horse--ascribing the passage to the wrong book, for she mentioned the "Spendthrift's Legacy," the first work that introduced him to his public. As is frequently the case, this book continued to be the one he was most connected with by non-readers of his works, for all that many more recent ones had had a much larger circulation.
"Are you sure it isn't in 'The Epidermis'?" he asked.
"What isn't?"
"'Gentle and low, an excellent thing in women'--or parrots--what you referred to just now...."
"What's 'The Epidermis'? Who's it by? I mean--I've seen it. But I didn't know it was yours." Whereat Mr. Challis felt crushed. Fancy anybody not knowing whom "The Epidermis" was by! If it had only been not having read it yet, that could have been softened by confession of intense yearning to do so, unfairly frustrated by anæmic Circulating Libraries. But not to know whom it was by!
"Name of my last book. Fidgetts and Thrills. Six Shillings net." Mr. Challis affected a light joking tone. But he was mortified. However, Miss Arkroyd was under obligation to invent something of a palliative nature, and in the effort Cordelia's voice lapsed.
"Oh yes-s-s-s!" said she, dwelling on the "s" to express a mind momentarily bewildered, but awaiting a light that was sure to come, if she made the hiss long enough, and then cutting sharply in with an interruption to it. "I was thinking of another book. Quite another!" And then closed the subject for good, but as one that might have been pursued had she been thinking of a book that was rather another, but not quite.
You see, the fact was that this young woman had read none of this author's works, though it seemed she yearned to do so. She had had no time for reading, and the book had always got sent back to Mudie's before she had read it, and so on. Well!--we can all sympathize, can't we? But, then, she shouldn't have pretended she had, because that was fibs. At most she had read a quotation from one of his stories--she couldn't say which--in a review.
Mr. Challis suspected all this, and was too much a man of the world to commit the blunder of proving that a lady had told fibs, however insignificant. He was rather glad the little green birds kept in such good voice, for though they usually dropped their cherries and wanted another, they never dropped their subject. They helped the position, and Challis felt he ought to help, too. His vanity was a little wounded; but, then, how jolly comfortable that bed was, and what a lovely cold douche that was after a real hot bath and what a choice cigar this was, just recently supplied by this lady's brother! No!--he would be generous, and help.
"How charmingly your sister draws! I was looking at her landscapes last night."
"She's Prong's favourite pupil."
"She's very clever?"
"Oh yes!--she can do anything she turns her hands to. We differ on many points. But it's impossible to deny her cleverness. Poor Sibyl!--I suppose she can't help it."
"Can't help what?"
"Well!--rubbing me up the wrong way. But we all do that." Challis began to feel that he was in the bosom of the Family. He might ask questions freely, and did so as soon as the quiet of a retired walk in the garden allowed freedom of speech. The parroquets dropped the subject abruptly as soon as they found themselves alone.
"What's the Great Idea? I heard Lady Arkroyd talking of it to Lord Felixthorpe. It was her idea, wasn't it?"
"Do you mean Mamma's?" Judith asked. Mr. Challis had not, and hesitated a moment. Should he say, "Miss Sibyl's"? Surely no! Sunday citizens would say that. Very well, then! Should it be "Sibyl's" or "Your sister's"? He almost wished the young females of this landed family were ladyships: it comes so much handier for outsiders. He risked the point, and said, "Sibyl's," but softened the offence by adding, "Your sister's, I mean." If the fine eyelids were offended, they concealed it remarkably well. So much so that Mr. Challis said to himself that no doubt the Normans Christian-named more than the Saxons. Or, were those eyelids lenient towards his personal self? He was a married man, certainly; only, then!--a married man may feel flattered, look you! But this is not our affair at present. How about the Great Idea?
"Sibyl's idea, of course." The speaker accepted the Christian name; she could have said "My sister's" stiffly. "It's a perfectly mad one. A sort of new Factory, or perhaps I ought to say Institution. Everything is to be made there, only nobody is to be allowed to work there who is qualified to do anything else."
"Anything else than what?"
"Why--don't you understand? Arts and crafts. Enamels and lace and tapestry and hammered brass and copper. Not manufactures--mediæval things...."
"Oh, ah!--I know."
"All that sort of thing. Well!--the Great Idea is to take either some premises of the proper sort, or a piece of land and build a Factory, with studios for herself and Lady Betty Inglis; she must be in it to make Sir Spender Inglis, who's enormously rich, find half the capital. I've done my best ... to prevent it. But it's no use my saying anything. Will keeps her up to it."
"Your brother?"
"Yes. You see, he's been looking into the question of building, and is certain he could build at half the usual cost. So he wants to try his hand on the Factory."
"Poor Sir Spender!"
"That's what I say. And poor Papa! However, that's not Will's only reason. He wants to build some workshops for himself to carry out experiments in wireless high-tension currents and aerostation. I don't understand these things."
"Your brother seems a universal genius, too?"
"Yes. But then, he took a very high degree at Cambridge. He always has that excuse. Sibyl has no degree, and ought to know better."
"What exactly is going to be done at the Factory? And are all the hands to be ladies? Or how?"
"Very much 'how?' I should say. The idea is, to employ no one who can do anything else anywhere else. People with one hand or one eye. Colour-blind guards who can't get places on railways. Deaf and dumb people that can read the Scriptures aloud automatically and never be any the wiser, don't you know?"
"Was that what your brother was talking about to your sister"--in this exact context "Sibyl" would hardly have worked in--"last night? About a blind chap he told her of. She thought he might be taught to model."
"Did they talk about him? I didn't hear them. A blind beggar-man in a street where I slum--sells matches, or pretends to. They won't get him to work for ten shillings a week."
"Why not?"
"Because he's earning ten shillings a day, probably, and putting by money. They do. Isn't that somebody calling me?... Yes.... I'm coming."
And then the young lady, with a parting benediction to her hearer for the amusing talk they had had, vanished in response to some summons which she had distinguished as intended for herself.
He for his part thought it necessary to propose to himself, and to carry unanimously, a vote of confidence in the great advantage to the brain it was to get away from one's surroundings now and again, and get a complete change. He had the hypocrisy to add that the said surroundings stood to derive benefit also, in ways not precisely specified. He felt stimulated and braced, confirmed in the image he treasured of his own identity. His interview with Miss Arkroyd had been like having the hair of his soul brushed by machinery, and called for classification. It was necessary to protest against a remark something somewhere had made, that his own home need not suffer by contrast. He indignantly repudiated the necessity for discussing the matter, as he threw away a cigar he had taken some time to smoke.
Still, he did not feel so sure on the point as not to be glad to be finally pinioned by a gentleman with a theory, whom he had provisionally escaped from at breakfast, an hour before. This was Mr. Triptolemus Wraxall, the Apostle of Universal Security, whose belief that policies and premiums were remedies for all this world's evils had taken possession of him while discharging the duties of visiting inspector to a Fire Insurance Office. In the intervals of his inspections, the object of which was to detect risks of fire in order that no policies should be issued where any such risks existed, he had evolved from his inner consciousness a number of systems, all practicable in the highest degree--almost self-acting, in fact. At least, they were none of them foolish, like the Rejected Proposal Insurance (Matrimony), which we believe fell through in consequence of the dishonest connivance of the parties, renewed proposals being frequently accepted within twenty-four hours of the payment of the sum assured. It was even reported that young ladies had advanced the first year's premium in some cases, in return for a commission of seventy-five per cent. at settlement; and that the Office was dissuaded with difficulty by its solicitors from commencing proceedings for conspiracy. An absurd scheme!
The scheme Mr. Wraxall was anxious to lay before Mr. Challis was at least (said its inventor) worthy of serious consideration. It was a simple System of Assurance in which unborn legitimate male children would, by payment of a premium, secure to themselves the full advantages of a University education. Of course, he did not rely on their personal application--that was to be done on their behalf by their proposed parents--but it was not only ladies and gentlemen who had substantial guarantees for the appearance of these undergraduates, but any lady and gentleman whatever were to be at liberty to take out Policies of Assurance, the premiums getting less and less in proportion as the improbability of the couple ever having lawful issue became greater and greater. The modest sum of fifty pounds was to cover a claim for the possible son of an engaged couple (as bashfully alluded to in marriage settlements); while a full hundred was required for an infant of unknown sex awaiting advertisement in the birth column of the Times. On the other hand, where there was very little chance of the courtship having a successful issue (as in the case of extreme youth of the parties) the premium went down contemptuously to a sovereign. Children in arms betrothed by their parents were to enjoy all the advantages of the institution for two shillings and sixpence. But the lowest figure on the list, nine decimal point ought-six pence, was the sum for which any married gentleman could secure its benefits for the not necessarily impossible son, born in lawful wedlock of himself and any lady, also married elsewhere, provided that the couple were of different nationalities and each resident at home. It was thought necessary, said Mr. Wraxall, to bar cases of murder by the policy-holder, of whichever sex.
"I can't see the necessity," said Challis. "The Office could not refuse to carry out the bargain because of suspicion of murder; and in case of conviction the chance of a family goes down to almost nil, because of the hanging. See?"
"Quite so, as a rule. But cases might occur of conviction and hanging deferred for months, even years. It might even happen that an insured son had become a bénéficiare to the extent of a complete University education before either of his parents was arrested for murder. Such an event would have to be provided against, or due allowance made in fixing the amount of the premium. But without going so far as that, we should meet with instances of murderers under this arrangement getting married while out on bail. A posthumous son could not be fairly branded as illegitimate because his father was hanged and his mother sentenced to penal servitude before his birth. Holy Matrimony is all that legitimacy demands."
"Couldn't you raise the premium, so as to cover all possible cases? Distaste for murder, on its merits, would tend to keep the number low. Make it eighteenpence."
"Pardon me, Mr. Challis, you do not understand Human Nature. The passing from pence to shillings marks a crucial point of its susceptibilities. For one man who will go over a shilling to provide against a defined contingency you will meet with a million who will invest pence on some chance they almost deny the existence of, simply because, if it did come to pass, the benefit would be so out of all proportion to the sum risked to obtain it. If an investment of one halfpenny could be shown to connect itself with a possible gain of ten million pounds, the whole population of the world would plunge to that extent. There can be no reasonable doubt that, however improbable it may seem to any married man that he should marry the widow of a particular foreigner, quite unknown, still, the advantage of having their son's education provided at a cost of nine point-ought-six pence would be an irresistible argument in favour of its outlay. Nothing short of mathematical certainty that no such son was possible would...."
"I understand perfectly. That is my own view. I draw the line at a shilling. To go beyond it opens up a world of immoral extravagance...." The speaker felt in danger of yawning, and, to avoid it and break loose from his persecutor, had to fall back on the time-honoured expedient of inventing a neglected duty elsewhere. He drew his watch suddenly from its pocket with the verve of an angler landing a fish, and exclaimed with sudden deep conviction: "I really must run!"
And Mr. Alfred Challis ran, and found that letters for the Post had to be ready at eleven forty-five. He had come away from home with the best intentions of writing a line every day to his wife, and, indeed, had meant to write long humorous letters with satirical descriptions of the British Toff at Home, all the points of which would make good copy after, as it was only Marianne. It wasn't like repeating a published article. But this time it would have to be a line, or at most a sheet of note-paper; and it was accordingly.
When one has arrived at the time of life when one weighs beforehand each sentence one writes, even to an intimate friend--instead of dashing recklessly on, as in one's glorious youth--how glad one sometimes is to be put under compulsion about the contents of a letter! Challis wouldn't acknowledge his obligation to the coercion of the Postal limit--not he! But he felt it all the same. For he couldn't have filled out his letter with Universal Security. Marianne wouldn't have understood a word of it. It wasn't her line. And as for his long talk with Judith Arkroyd ... well, now!--why on earth couldn't he just write that he had had one, and that she had told him a lot about the family, and he would write a long letter about it next time, but really this was only a line to catch the Post. Why not, indeed? Yes, of course, that was the proper thing to write. He wrote it, and denied the pause, to his own satisfaction. But he was grateful to the Post for being so coercive and superseding and cancelling all considerations of--of what? He denied that there was anything to cancel, and directed the letter.
Chapter V
OF A RAINY DAY AT ROYD. HOW A MOTOR-CAR CAME TO GRIEF. HOW MISS ARKROYD'S MOTHER WENT TO THANES CASTLE AND SHE HERSELF DIDN'T
A little bit of duty done always seems at its best when it has taken the form of a written letter. Because when the time comes for posting, whatever the letter may contain--whether it be a lame apology for breaking an engagement or a promise to send a cheque without fail next week--the penny stamp and the direction are just the same as if it had been to reproach Angela for not appearing yesterday at church-parade in Hyde Park, or had enclosed a final discharge of your tailor's account. So Mr. Challis's rather perfunctory line to catch the Post, boldly stamped and directed, quite set his mind at ease about his home obligations as soon as ever it was licked and stuck to, past recall.
In fact, so relieved was his conscience, after he had handed this letter to Elphinstone the butler to see that it went to the Post for him, that he felt quite at liberty to enjoy some more soul-brush the next time the chance came. All the more from a conviction of the importance of its contents conveyed by the professional manner of Mr. Elphinstone's reception of it--a manner that said, "This really important letter shall go, whatever other don't!" If this enjoyment of the soul-brush became too oppressive to his conscience, he could square accounts by an extra sheet or so of letter-paper.
Anyhow, he could now live for the present. He was rather disgusted to find that, whatever he decided on to enjoy next, it would have to be in the house, unless he was prepared to get wet out of doors. For, taking a mean advantage of him while he was writing his short letter, it had come on to rain.
In a country-house, when it comes on to rain after a fine early morning, despair settles on the household, which wanders about moaning, and looking for someone to come and have a game at billiards; or lamenting the cruel fate which has beguiled it into putting its things on, and now it supposes that it had better go and take them off again and settle down to something, because it's going to pour; or asking what was the name of that capital game we played every day at Fen Grange, for instance, when it rained for three weeks on end, and nobody was the least bored. It is in sad hours such as this that you seek for a chess-opponent and find none, except a class of player that knows the moves, whom you fly from candidly; and then, if fortunate, you may meet with one of another class, who has forgotten the openings. Secure him, but don't let him set you an interesting problem and run away.
"I've never played, but I should like to learn. Only I really don't know where the men are. Nobody plays here, you see, and they get lost or hidden in cupboards." Thus Judith in the second hour of a steady downpour to Mr. Challis's inquiry, for he was always ready for a game at chess, without being keen about it.
"You are not getting on with your book, anyhow!" said he. "Can't I hunt about for the chessmen till I find them?" The book was one he had recommended at the first coming of the rain, and it was when it was closed in despair that Challis asked his question.
"I think we must ask Elphinstone. Would you ring?" Challis rang, and a sub. who appeared was instructed to consult Mr. Elphinstone. Judith continued: "No!--I hate sinners who are touched by the Dies Iræ in a cathedral and repent; especially when they've got too old to do any real mischief. I would sooner they went to the Devil honestly...." And so the chat ran on, Challis cordially concurring, and not hinting at any joy whatever over the sinner that repenteth, until the young man Samuel came back with chessmen. There was another set, of ivory, it appeared, but Mr. Elphinstone had desired Samuel to say that a prawn was defective, and one of the bishops was out of his socket, and couldn't be got to screw in. Samuel had been put to it to charge his memory with this obscure message; he was confident about the prawn, but had misgiving about the bishop--feared it was disrespectful to the Church perhaps; but went away relieved when nothing explosive came of it. His situation was safe.
Many of us know that teaching chess is no sinecure. The alumnus who refuses to accept the rules as they stand; who wants to know why the pawns may not move backwards; why the pieces may not jump over, like in draughts; why the queen should have such absurd latitude; who thinks all the black pieces should remain on the black squares, and per contra--how well we know him! And the difficulty a peculiar class of intellect has in mastering the knight's move, condemning it on its merits, as too much like squinting, or italics! And another yet, which, on being shown how to make a particular move, makes it, and says contentiously: "Well!--I don't see anything so very clever in that."
Miss Arkroyd did not quite do any of these things, but she was nearly as bad. She remembered the moves, in the abstract, but forgot which of the pieces made them; and this answered as well as forgetting the moves for all purposes of confusion. With so beautiful a hand it couldn't matter how much she fingered the pieces. And Mr. Challis seemed very contented. The instruction was a farce, but it served its turn, and a sort of appearance of a game developed while the rain outside came steadily down, and checkmated everyone in the house. Desultory chat, in which the question, "Whose move is it?" frequently occurred, helped Challis to a further insight into family conditions and local history. En revanche the young lady added to her impressions of Challis's own domestic circumstances and his literary career, and found that an image was forming in her mind of Mrs. Challis. It wasn't a beautiful image, but it was worthy. It was that of a good soul. But not a good sort of body--nothing so bad as that! She felt glad, for Challis's sake. A good soul and the best of wives; that kind of thing! You couldn't expect education of very finished achievement in those sort of people, in the class she came from. For Miss Arkroyd had got somehow a perfectly clear impression of a class undefinable, but homogeneous and recognizable by symptoms. A class that didn't dress for dinner, a class that liked potatoes in their skins as a palliative to cold moist roast mutton d' obbligo; and did not condemn, but merely looked coldly on, at menu's and finger-glasses. A class whose males smoked pipes and whose females refused cigarettes; which, though its young learned French at school, condemned France as the most salient foreign incident on an incorrigibly foreign Continent, and a perfect moral plague-spot of unfaithful wives and husbands.
But however good a soul this man's wife was, Judith caught herself being sorry for him. Yesterday evening, when she went good-naturedly to him, as to her mother's latest discovery, just to say a few words and prevent his getting left out in the cold, he had seemed to her only moderately interesting, and far from handsome. Now she began with a discriminating eye to see that, though he was far from handsome, he was just as far from ugly. Still, she perceived that it did credit to her discriminating eye to find this out. She hadn't noticed it so much when he turned up unexpectedly in the garden in the morning--unexpectedly, because she was really unconscious of having said in his hearing that she was going across the lawn to feed her birds. But now, in a lucky half-light in the red drawing-room, with his eyes dropped on the chess-board, his forehead and eye-framing had a look about them that was certainly interesting, if not a good substitute for beauty. Judith would have preferred the beauty, certainly; but she could look contentedly at the good soul's property, and go on wondering what she was like, while he considered knotty points connected with the game.
"You've put your king in check, Miss Arkroyd. You mustn't do that." He looked up suddenly and caught her eyes. Her rapport with the game saved him from his vanity by good luck. "I see you thought you had caught me," was his interpretation of her gaze. It was in token of a supposed triumph, so he thought. Whatever it was, it became disconcerted.
"Oh!--mustn't I do that? I think it oughtn't to count, when one does it oneself. Don't you?" Challis said to himself that this woman was rather a goose. Why he felt a little disappointed at her being rather a goose he could not have said off-hand. He apologized for the stupidity of the laws of games generally; said they were clearly wrong all round. But it would make such a lot of fuss to alter them now that he doubted if it was worth it.
"You're not in earnest, Mr. Challis?" So the lady spoke, and Challis said to himself that Marianne would never have found that out. "Sharp, by comparison!" was his comment to himself; and then aloud: "But I can't have you bored, Miss Arkroyd. You don't care about this." To which Judith replied: "It's not exciting, so far;" and both laughed. The discovery that each had been thinking the same thing was full of conductivities. It improved their footing.
"It can't be, you know, when you come to think of it," said he, pushing his chair expressively three inches back--an expression of renunciation--with a slight boredom-admitting stretch. "Chess requires apprenticeship before it can be enjoyed, like smoking."
"I see. And this game has made me sick, like a boy's first cigar. Why didn't you tell me?"
"One must begin some time.... Well! I don't know either. Must one?..."
"There was nothing else to do."
"We might have gone into the billiard-room and heard politics. I heard them going on through the door a little while ago. Mr. ... what's his name?--the politician...."
"Mr. Ramsey Tomes?"
"Mr. Ramsey Tomes. I gathered that he was giving details of his great scheme of Reciprocal Interdependent Taxation of Imports--what he touched upon at dinner last night...."
"Don't let me disturb the chess!" says a passer through the room. It is Lady Arkroyd with an armful of some form of embroidery which no one is on any account to assist her in carrying to the drawing-room beyond. But what she means is, "Don't arrest my progress. Mind your own business." Challis makes a convulsive suggestion of willingness to assist the Universe, but doesn't mean anything at all by it; and her ladyship floats away, leaving him normal. But his plunge, overdone from dramatic motives, has knocked the board over. The Fates seem to league together to throw cold water on this ill-starred game. Judith conveys the fact by a shrug, but adds a smile, that it may be understood there is no amertume in the situation. Further, she says she can hear Tea. A sense that Life's problem is solved for the moment mixes with a consciousness of hairbrush-time come again, and Mr. Challis disperses to reassemble presently and enjoy it.
How it is pouring, to be sure! And how grateful one feels to it--abstraction though it be--for doing it in earnest, and making an end of all doubts whether we may not get out for a turn later. Nobody is going to do that to-day.
Challis encounters young Lord Felixthorpe on the stairs, coming from the billiard-room. He is always amiable and well-mannered, this young nobleman, and manages to make everyone think he has their good opinion of him at heart. But he often seems to be seeking their sympathy with his derision of someone else. Or of himself, for that matter--so Challis goes on thinking, for all this is what passes in his mind; the story does not vouch for its truth. During their slow ascent of the great staircase together, he is more than half-convinced that the young toff really cares about his views on motoring.
"I am quite aware," says his lordship, pausing at a corner, as though one might go upstairs at any slowness, even with the young man Samuel and a colleague agglomerating gilded porcelain within hearing as tea-factors. "I am quite aware, my dear Mr. Challis, that the motor-car is at present an object of execration to the public. But I sympathize so keenly that I feel bound to spend as much time as possible in the only place in which I am not tempted to forget myself and use bad language against motorists. I refer to the motor-car itself. Believe me that the only thing that can reconcile a well-constituted mind to any practice essentially damnable is the practice itself. I shall look forward to your accompanying me in my Panhard, after a profusion of curses perfectly reasonably directed against it--in which you will have my sincerest sympathy."
"When do you expect the detestable contrivance--I make no disguises, you see--to arrive? I shall be here for a week, if my hosts continue to tolerate me."
"It ought to be here now. From the fact that it is not here now, I am led to infer that something has happened. In this cautious expression you will kindly observe that it includes the possibility that my chauffeur, Louis Bossier, has got drunk on the road, and has stopped the night at an inn to become sober."
"Or he may have been poisoned by petroleum."
"Yes, or his head may have been cut off by a police-wire, stretched across the road in the dark. But in that case I fancy we should have heard."
* * * * *
When Challis descended the stairs, he paused to look out at the great window with the quarried grisaille and armorial bearings in each light, and saw through a quarry temporarily repaired with common window-glass a clear view of the approach to the house, dutifully draining off the deluge that continued to fall steadily--steadily--on the gravel road the great beech avenue took such care of, standing on each side of it all the way to just this side of the Lodge. How well he knew what that soaked gravel would have to say to the pedestrian who ventured out--what it was saying to that unhappy man in some sort of oilskin costume who was coming slowly, jadedly along, above his under-squelch and below an umbrella that can have done him very little good. Mr. Challis saw at a glance that he was not indigenous to the soil; a second glance determined that he was a Frenchman; a third that he was a chauffeur. Certainly Louis Rossier--who else? He smiled as a non-motorist smiles when a motor comes to grief. When he reached the drawing-room, Mr. Ramsey Tomes was already applying for a second cup. That gentleman was thirsty, no doubt. He had talked for two hours. Not that he meant to stop--far from it!
Challis had no one to talk to for the moment, so he listened to Mr. Tomes, who went on again as soon as he had made sure there were two lumps.
"I start from an aspect of the question that must compel the most incredulous to admit that at least the matrix is ripe for solution."
As the orator paused a moment, everyone felt bound to fructify a little, and said, "I see, you propose to ..." or, "I see your idea ..." or merely got as far as "I see you ..." and remained stranded. All except the disciple of Graubosch, who muttered knowingly, "The Brandenbierenschreiligrath System. Graubosch's Appendix B deals with it." He and Mr. Wraxall exchanged astute nods; the latter to oblige, because he really knew nothing about it. But Mr. Tomes wasn't going to leave anything vague. Not he!--a man with a fixed glare, and loaded to the muzzle with exhaustive elucidation!
Challis did not wait for the next instalment. He cast about for an anchorage, and had not found a satisfactory one when Lord Felixthorpe, who had not appeared at the beginning of Tea, came into the room with something to communicate written on his countenance.
"What's gone amiss, Scip?" said his friend, William Rufus.
"That idiot Rossier...."
"I told you he was a fool. What's he done now?"
"Left the machine in a ditch, and walked home through the mud.... Oh no, he hasn't hurt himself. I wish he had--in moderation." The public becomes interested, and explanation spreads over the room. A lady's voice says, afar, that its owner supposes now we shall lose our excursion, and that place will be gone, and it would have been the very thing. Challis doesn't understand this, and asks Judith the meaning. He is in her neighbourhood somehow--seems to have sacrificed hearing more about the accident. She supposes Sibyl meant the place for the Great Idea. But they couldn't have gone to-morrow unless the weather mended, anyhow.
People chatter so in a room full; you soon lose threads of conversation. Challis knew little more about either the accident or the Great Idea when he went away to dress for dinner an hour later. He was only aware that Mr. Tomes was still at work on the Reciprocal Interdependent Taxation of Imports, and that Miss Arkroyd was going to play Halma with him if he came up soon enough after dinner.
* * * * *
In his letter to Marianne, written after he went up to his room rather early--people are very apt to think it's getting on for bedtime after rain-beleaguered days in country-houses--Mr. Challis merely mentioned two games at Halma, and adduced the exciting character of that game as a reason why very little was said. His letter implied that he was being bored, which was untrue. However, the words "in the house all day" would do that without an antidote. And we couldn't expect him to mention the soul-brush, especially as he disallowed its existence. He said a good deal of what he did know of the motor-car mishap, which was natural, for--so he said--he had inferred, from the excitement on the subject, that this car, when it appeared, would be the first ever seen by most of the inhabitants of the district.
This machine was the latest extravagance of young Lord Felixthorpe, who had spent a thousand pounds upon it; and its arrival from the agent at Grime, who was to welcome it--or rather its components--to England, and to qualify it for the enjoyment of its riders, and the execrations of its victims, was looked forward to with feverish anxiety by both. But he could not give such details as were supplied next day, after a fuller sifting of Louis Rossier's report, which was not very intelligible at first. These had to wait for a postscript, which told how the chauffeur, who did not understand three words of English, had proved as sensitive to misdirection as the compass is to the magnetic current. He went the wrong way instinctively several times, and was headed back, or finger-pointed back, just as often. In the end he made an unfortunate choice between two roads, although warned by a long shouted instruction from a turnipfield--which ignored his nationality robustly--that the cross-over bridge, when he come to Sto'an's mill, nigh the running wa'ater, wasn't to be troosted to carry lo'ads; and the shouter would be rather shoy of it, in yower place. But you might take e'er a one of they two ways, at your liking. Being none the wiser, Louis Rossier chose the more tempting one; and when he came to the cross-over bridge, which spanned a ditch, could not, of course, tell the meaning of the Local Authority's posted caution to the effect that nothing over two tons was to use it; with the result that it gave way in the middle. It was too small a bridge to let any vehicle larger than a goat-chaise through and almost too small a ditch to accommodate one, but the motor was trapped and detained in its sunk centre.
"You'll have to get to t' Hall on Sha'anks's mear, yoong ma-an," said a native, who was not really taking pains to hide his joy at the mishap. Louis got to the Hall, but didn't know he had ridden Shanks's mare.
However, for a first accident with a new Panhard, it wasn't so bad! Only one tyre ruined; its comrade was mendable. In the end the gorgeous scarlet vehicle was got to the house by horses, and was recovering its spirits and snorting, with the new spare tyre on, by the time the company at the Hall had eaten too much lunch, and were arranging how they would spend their afternoon. Challis had despatched his letter of the previous night, and was enjoying himself. A gloriously fine day, following an isolated local depression of the barometer, had removed the local depressions the latter had occasioned to everyone else, and Miss Arkroyd had ended a second interview over the parroquets by promising to take him to see the Roman and British camps on the other side of the village.
* * * * *
The first really professional excursion of the new motor was to be dedicated to the Great Idea. For the Great Idea, however vaguely it was formulated, was clear about one thing. Premises would be de rigueur. It was therefore incumbent on its promoters to inspect premises, both in town and country. At present the latter was the more popular, because the weather was superb, and the notion of incorporating with the Factory a Village Community, and perhaps a Garden City, both in the evening with a flawless Autumn sky, was too tempting to be neglected. So, this afternoon, William Rufus and Sibyl and Lord Felixthorpe--in spite of an impression he gave that he was treating the Great Idea with derision--were to run over to Whealhope Paulswell, about thirty miles off, in the motor, to give that treasure a baptismal run and inspect an extinct factory, which had been empty a quarter of a century. They would be back by dinner-time.
Sir Murgatroyd, of whom we have seen nothing, as he has been continually talking about the ruin of English Trade with Mr. Ramsey Tomes, was going to take that gentleman to see some manure. People can look at some manure, and talk about nefarious Germany, both at once. There is reason to suppose that these two gentlemen talked of very little but the ruin of English Trade during the whole of this visit to Royd. And wherever any member of the household was employed--we are recording the impressions of Mr. Alfred Challis--he or she could always hear, in the remote distance, what was only too clearly Mr. Tomes taking this opportunity to state, once for all; or Sir Murgatroyd feeling bound, alike as a Statesman and an Englishman, to protest against. A steady, continuous rumble, on these lines, accompanied the not particularly busy hum of men, women, and chits, that made up the round of life at Royd. The chits, by-the-by, of which there were two or three, naturally involved a corresponding number of young men, each to each; or each in the pocket of each, as you choose. None of them seemed the least ashamed of never having a word to throw at anyone outside the pocket, except its owner, and the rest of Europe seemed by common consent to take no notice of them. And all the while each one, and the contents of its pocket, was, like enough--so thought Mr. Challis--the centre of an incubation of memories that were to last a lifetime. "As they bake, so they will brew," philosophized Mr. Challis to himself, and clouded over a little as he remembered that he, too, was in the twenties once. Four of them played lawn-tennis that afternoon, and the others got somehow lost sight of. No matter!
Lady Arkroyd had the carriage, and drove over to Thanes Castle, to see the Duchess of Rankshire before the Royalties came. But she wasn't at all sure she wouldn't have done something else if she had known that Judith was going to cry off at the last minute. She relied a good deal on her eldest daughter as a factor in social intercourse. But she didn't confess it.
"What on earth is the girl going to do with herself? How can you be so tiresome, Ju? Now do just get ready and come. There's no hurry. I can wait."
"Now, Madre dear, you really ought to know by this time how bored I always am with the sort of people they get at the Castle. And I've got letters to write. I must answer Lady Kitty about the orchids."
"Nonsense, girl! You can't be all the afternoon over that."
"I shall go out later. In an hour or so. I dare say I shall take Mr.--what's his name?--Harris--round the village and show him the Roman Camp. He'll know what castrametation means, and things...."
"Mr. 'Titus Scroop'? My dear!--he's as happy as he can be talking to that idiot Brownrigg about Metaphysics and nonsense. Do let him alone!"
"Well!--I dare say I shall. Or otherwise, as may be. But I won't come to Thanes. Love to the Duchess."
Judith was a stronger character than her mother, and won. As the latter was driven off, she said to herself, for no apparent reason "Mr. Titus Scroop."
Lady Arkroyd was in the habit of asking every celebrity she came across to her home, because she worshipped genius. But she took the genius for granted if she saw any author, artist, or musician's name often enough in print. Was she sometimes rash? Well--yes--sometimes! Perhaps a doubt about "Titus Scroop's" genius was the reason she said his name. But if so, why did it lead to a resolve in her mind to ask Mrs. Candour--the Mrs. Candour of the moment, whom she was sure to meet at Thanes--more about Mrs. "Titus Scroop"? She kept thinking of it, off and on, all the way to the park gates with the dragon-sentinels on piers on each side presenting arms.
And all the while Challis was being bored by that idiot Brownrigg, and wishing anyone would come and rescue him. He resented the idea that he had any special rescuer in view. But no one had said he had. However, Miss Arkroyd had certainly spoken about a walk to the Roman Camp; so naturally he would cast her for the part, don't you see?
Chapter VI
OF THE GRAUBOSCHIAN PHILOSOPHY. HOW JUDITH ARKROYD WALKED WITH MR. CHALLIS TO THE RECTORY. HOW HE SAID NOTHING ABOUT HIS WIFE BEING HIS DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER. HOW HE WAS OUT OF HIS ELEMENT AT THE RECTORY. SALADIN AND HIS CAT. HIS HEDGEHOG
The gentleman spoken of so disrespectfully by his hostess was Mr. Adolphus Brownrigg, who was an enthusiastic disciple of the great German philosopher Graubosch, whose scheme embodied a complete Reorganization of Society on an entirely new basis. But whereas all previous reorganizers of Society had started on the fallacious and mischievous line of breaking up existing institutions and replacing them by others of their own devising, this reformer proposed to utilize them all as portions of his new System. Thus the reigning Sovereign would fall easily into his place of Chairman of a great Central Committee of Management, retaining the Crown as a distinguishing badge of his office; the existing machinery of Parliamentary election would answer equally well for the Members of the Central Committee; the Bench would supply us with a most satisfactory staff for what he termed Courts of Discriminative Decision, and so on, and so on. Even the very Policemen's Uniforms would be available for the new staff of Order-Keepers and Crime-Preventors that formed part of his System. Nay, the Coinage itself would come in useful as Exchangeable Tokens in his new Method of Sale and Purchase Accommodation.
"What attitude does Professor Graubosch adopt towards the Religions of the world?" asked Challis, as he and the advocate of this new Reform walked about the garden, discussing it.
"Graubosch," replied the latter, "is, broadly speaking, in favour of their complete abolition. Nor do I myself think any continuation of them would be found necessary in view of his new System of Metaphysical Checks. No one recognizes more fully than Graubosch the necessity for Moral Restraint derived from a Consciousness of the Unseen, whether acting as a stimulus in connection with an exalted and unselfish anxiety for personal rewards throughout Eternity, or as a deterrent resulting from the anticipation of unpleasantness hereafter, especially of continuous oxidation with evolution of caloric. But the new System provides for both."
"As for instance?..."
"For instance, in respect of the Idea of a Deity.... But perhaps, Mr. Challis, your own views on this subject are ... a ... well defined? I should be sorry to ... to...."
"To give offence? Pray don't feel any scruples on my account."
"Well, I will continue. In respect of this Idea of a Deity, it is true that Graubosch abolishes God, as such. But his System claims to provide a substitute; and this substitute is, to my thinking, superior in many respects for working purposes to the Idea it displaces. The first Metaphysical Check he formulates is the Invariable Necessary Antecedent. The acceptance of this as an inevitable condition of thought is an essential of the System of Graubosch."
"How does it act as a check?"
"It is rather long to follow out; but, put as briefly as I can, it is somewhat thus: Graubosch admits the possibility of an infinite number of successions of Antecedents, as we have an infinite number of results or sequents. But the effect on the Metaphysician of contemplating such a condition of the Universe is fatal to reasoning, and may easily produce suspension of the faculties. Philosophy stipulates for a modus vivendi; and as a working necessity for argument, if for no other reason, Graubosch refers the whole of the Universe to one Invariable Necessary Antecedent; which he accepts, for reasons which appear to me satisfactory, as obviously superior to any one unit of its results or sequences. We have no right, he says, to assume that any result or consequence is not achievable by such an Antecedent."
"I concur, on the whole. Does Graubosch ascribe intelligence, in our sense of the word, to this Antecedent?"
"Certainly not. Intelligence is merely a sequence or consequence of some minute fraction ... of ... of its power."
"Why did you hesitate?"
"From a feeling that Power itself may only be a finite humanism, so to speak--an Entity on all fours with Intelligence. But the Metaphysician has to leave himself a few words, to speak with. Now the idea of greater and less is axiomatic, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that our Intelligence is a lesser thing than its working substitute in the Invariable and Necessary Antecedent."
"I quite understand. To create Intelligence, its Creator when creating himself must go one better--break his own anticipated record. What are Graubosch's views about Good and Evil? They both are factors in our existing System, especially the latter."
"He ignores both, as antiquated and unnecessary. In his System, the fruitless discussions about which is which--where one ends and the other begins, and so on--disappear entirely."
"That sounds good. Vice and Virtue could shake hands over it--a Coalition Ministry, don't you know?"
"Pardon me!--the exact reverse. Party Government would be intensified. But I ought to describe what Graubosch terms the Plus and Minus of his System, in its Moral or Ethical aspects. The first expression recognizes in what has been hitherto absurdly called 'Good' merely the Invariable and Necessary Antecedent leaking out, so to speak, and becoming perceptible to our Senses. The second, in what has been equally absurdly called 'Evil,' its diminution or repression."
Challis yawned. He was getting bored. "Does not that," he said, "assume the existence of some counter-power, able to diminish and repress?"
"Graubosch avoids doing so. And therein lies the beauty of his System. His Minus is simply negation of his Plus. An exact parallel is supplied by the phenomena of light and darkness. To ascribe to darkness powers of extinguishing light is scientifically absurd."
"I see." Challis spoke in a winding-up tone. His bore perceived it, and dexterously pinioned him.
"Pardon me one moment more," he said, "We are at a point where the beauty of the System becomes most manifest. I refer to its elasticity--its power of utilizing, provisionally at any rate, existing Institutions pending its maturer development. Graubosch does not doubt the efficacy at some future date of the Metaphysical Check on our propensities supplied by the Plus and Minus of his System. But he proposes for the present--at least, until believers in a Personal God from early youth have had time to die out--to postpone the Plus which is to take his place. Also--and this is important in connection with the operation of Metaphysical Checks--he is favourable to the retention of a Personal Devil until the Masses have acquired an insight into Metaphysics...."
"I must ask you to excuse me," said Mr. Challis. "I have letters to write, and they say the Post goes at twelve...."
"But I hope I have impressed you favourably. We must bear in mind...."
"Most favourably, my dear sir. And it seems to me that if we only let things alone vigorously enough, we may regard Professor Graubosch's great Reform as already in operation...." Mr. Challis paused on behalf of a newcomer, to whom he resumed: "Not at all, Miss Arkroyd ... not the least! I assure you Mr. Brownrigg and I have talked the subject dry.... No!--I really am speaking the truth." This with absolute fervour.
"Because I do so hate interrupting," said Judith, who had been waiting to speak. "And I saw you were so interested. But I can say what I have to say and go--and then you can finish." Mr. Challis looked dejected, and Judith continued: "I only wanted to say that I shall be walking down to the village presently, and could show you the Roman and British camps and the prehistoric monolith." Mr. Challis looked elated. "Only presently, when you have really had your talk out. I shall be on the terrace." Mr. Challis was just on the point of arresting Miss Arkroyd's departure by another violent profession of intense completion of the subject in hand, when prudence murmured in his ear that his bore mustn't be allowed to come too. Now a pretence that he was yearning for three words more, and would then meet the lady on the terrace, just served to place Mr. Brownrigg in the position of a fixture. It localized him. Otherwise he might have moved with the train of events, unshaken off. Even as it was, a very vigorous "I really mustn't keep Miss Arkroyd waiting any longer" was wanted to effect the extraction--for it was quite like tooth-drawing. But the force of handling--as the art-critics phrase it--was so strong that Mr. Brownrigg couldn't say, "Why shouldn't I come too, I should like to know?" He would have, nevertheless. But he had to give the point up, and went to look for Mr. Wraxall.
* * * * *
Judith was waiting on the terrace looking handsome. She was wrestling with an intractable glove-button, and her hand that was operative was embarrassed by her sunshade having been taken into its confidence. Mr. Challis could hold the sunshade, clearly. A very simple thing! And when the glove-button socketed into its metallic nidus, and was satisfactory, how obvious for the young lady to take that sunshade back again, with a profusion of thanks as for a great service done! But did the little incident leave the two performers exactly where it found them? Sometimes things of this sort don't. Things of what sort, do you ask? Well!--you see, we are watching Mr. Alfred Challis's mind, and can, for the present, only answer--the sort that made that gentleman conscious that the twenties and he had parted company many years ago.
Perhaps, however, it's only one of those nonsensical ideas Sibyl gets (now, if you please, we are peering into the lady's mind) when she tells her sister that flirtations with married men are detestable. However, this time Sibyl couldn't have a word to say--a literary man with an attenuated beard, and hair that seems to have thought of curling once, and then thought better of it, and gone a little gray hesitatingly! And a weak mouth! And a lay-down collar! And such clothes! No!--this time Sibyl could find no excuse. If this man wasn't safe, you might as well have no male friends or even acquaintances at all, and live in a harem.
Besides, there was something very interesting about his eyes and forehead, which were his good points. Oh yes!--his hands were not bad. They looked sensitive, and showed the bones. Judith's mind made swift excursion down a side-alley. What was the impossible Mrs. Challis like to live with, she wondered? Did he adore her, or how? Perhaps she wasn't really a "good soul" at all, but adorable--in reason.
"Thank you so much, Mr. Challis. I always get into such a mess with buttons. I hope you are not afraid of dogs, because Saladin must come with us. He never gets any exercise unless I take him out." A huge Danish boarhound, conscious that he was spoken of, looked up and appeared to sanction the use of his name. He had smelt Mr. Challis, and found some excuse for him, presumably, in some nicety of bouquet human nostrils know not of.
"Saladin's welcome," said he. "But I'm like Br'er Rabbit--a mighty puny man myself, and I may very easily git trompled...." For Saladin was appalling.
"What's that out of?"
"Uncle Remus."
"I suppose I ought to read Uncle Remus?"
"Yes; but don't if you don't like."
"Not if I ought to?"
"The ought is not a high moral ought. You ought to read Uncle Remus if you want something amusing to read."
"I haven't much time for reading, and I want to read 'The Epidermis.' Everyone tells me I shall enjoy it."
"Perhaps everyone knows. I don't feel so much confidence myself. Read Uncle Remus first, anyhow. If you do that, I'll ask you to accept a copy of t'other one, from the Author."
"I've just written off for a copy to the publisher."
"Oh!--have you?--I would tell him to transfer the order to my account--only that takes all the edge off the proceeding."
"When did Uncle Remus come out first?"
"Oh--a long time ago! It's odd to think how long. I'm over forty. I was almost a boy."
"Perhaps that's why you liked it so much? Fancy your being fourteen years older than me!"
"Perhaps." The last half of Miss Arkroyd's remark had to go without answer. It was too parenthetical to call for one.
Experience teaches us that there is no meshwork of circumstance into which flatter conversation may weave itself than the combination of a married man, a young woman, and a walk out on a fine afternoon, of set purpose. At least, that was the text of a literary reflection of Mr. Challis at this juncture. He put it away in a mental storehouse for his next book. Its truth or falsehood is immaterial at present.
Judith made no mental note of what her experience taught; but she knew she couldn't stand being bored and she felt it coming. She had made up her mind to have an amusing walk with this popular favourite. And Sibyl might say what she liked, but she wouldn't be balked!
A sense of intended impertinence may have heightened her colour slightly, as she stopped and turned the fine eyes full on to her companion. He stopped, too, looking round.
"Mr. Challis, I want you to tell me something.... No!--don't promise till you know what it is...."
"I am sure, Miss Arkroyd, you will ask me nothing I should hesitate to tell you...."
"Don't be too confident ... it's very impertinent!"
"All right--go on! I'll forgive you."
"Is 'Ziz' in the 'Spendthrift's Legacy' Mrs. Challis?"
"My wife? Marianne?" Mr. Challis was conscious of being reminded of his wife. A fine nuance of ashamedness--it could hardly be called shame--affected his mind, surely? Else why note the perfectly obvious fact that if he and Marianne were never to forget each other for a single instant, life would be insupportable to both. Perhaps he can hardly be said to have noted it, though; suppose we say that he declined to note it, consciously, because of its absurd irrelevance.
"Yes!--Marianne." Judith's eyes, with no concession in them of any shade of impertinence in the use of Mrs. Challis's Christian name, waited for the answer, as she still stood, not stirring. Was she saying to herself that this was tit-for-tat; a riposte for his "Sibyl" of their talk in the morning? Saladin, not used to this sort of thing, waited also, reproachfully. Challis, rather accepting "Marianne" as a sanction of his "Sibyl," was again conscious that his soul was being brushed by machinery--not an intrusive brush though; an easy one he could ignore. His answer was not difficult.
"Not a particle of resemblance between them! Ziz was a"--he stopped himself just in time--"a ... a ... almost a sort of professional beauty." The one word "professional" made all the difference--saved the position.
Now, Judith had a habit of despising dangerous ground in social intercourse; it was part of what Mr. Challis had called her prepotente disposition. She would always put her horse at a quickset hedge if any image crossed her mind of the finger of Discretion, the monitress; especially if it looked like Sibyl's. While Mr. Challis was breathing freely about his dexterous escape, she made up her mind to know all about this impossible person who wasn't a professional beauty. As to how she should get at this knowledge, that was another matter. All she could see her way to at the moment was--not to be in a hurry and spoil her chances. But she was very much mistaken if she couldn't do with this man, whom she thought of as nerves and brains and very little else, what she had done before now with stronger men than he--viz., twist him round her little finger.
"Ah!--I'm so glad," said she. And then, as though to clothe her pause in walking with the semblance of a moment of mental tension, she resumed movement forward. Saladin emphasized her action by a single tremendous bark, and did the same. A startled waterfowl decided that his position was untenable, and condemned the neighbourhood, going off in a bee-line with a rush. Two horses out at grass galloped round their field, and stood at gaze, with open nostrils. Of which events Saladin, their source and origin, took no notice, but moved on, smelling the planet gently and thoughtfully.
"Why are you glad?" asked Challis. "You didn't like Ziz, I suppose?" A note of pique in his voice. The young lady's confidence about the finger-twisting grew.
"I admired her," she said with marked emphasis. "She fascinated me down to the ground. But ... if you ask me ... you mustn't mind my saying, you know...."
"I can't tell you how I enjoy hearing what you really think. No compliments, please!"
"Well ... if I can express myself! I should say your heroine's was rather a ... rather a ... shrill personality. I don't mean unlovable exactly, but ... well!... I can't think of any other way of putting it."
"She was meant to be excitable. Neurotic, as the slang goes nowadays. Marianne is neither. I hope you liked the reconciliation scene by the open grave, and the way they appeal, as it were, to the coffin for forgiveness. Some of the reviews thought it strained."
"Strained!--oh no! It seemed to me in some ways one of the most touching things I ever read. And her explanation to Septimus that she had divorced him on principle in order that he should marry Julia, and both get a chance of recovering their position in society.... But do tell me--only it's hardly fair to ask--did you mean that she put the arsenic in Julia's coffee, or the negress?"
"I leave that an open question for the reader to speculate about. But you may rest assured of one thing, Miss Arkroyd--the young person in my novel is about as unlike my dear wife as she can be." He had determined to pay some little tribute to his dear wife as soon as the chance came, that she should lie less upon his conscience. Here it was. "Marianne is the exact opposite--a pussycat upon the hearthrug--a ... kettle singing on the hob, you might almost say. She's not exactly what's called a clever woman, certainly...."
"But she is none the worse for that! How I do hate clever women!" All the same, Judith thought to herself: "Why couldn't he leave her in peace, on the hearthrug or the hob?" His last reservation had spoiled his little tribute, and indeed, he felt it himself. Bother!
Setting it right would make it worse. In spite of a fervent murmur from the young lady, that she felt she knew exactly what Mrs. Challis was like, and that they would be sure to understand each other, and what a pity it was Mrs. Challis had not been able to come, he felt he would do best to brusquer the conversation. He couldn't well say "Marianne isn't here because your mother never invited her--only told her she might come." So, feeling that if he could detach the conversation from Marianne personally he did not very much care by what means the end was effected, he made a fragmentary remark to the effect that he had had an original in his mind for the neurotic heroine, but quite a different person from his wife--utterly unlike her. "Unlike in appearance--individuality--everything! Is that the market-cross?" No, it wasn't the market-cross; it was the pump. So Mr. Challis's conclusion did very little towards its object.
Judith halted as before, after establishing the pump. She knew she was going to be impertinent again; and drawled a word or two to that effect, to get on a safe footing. "But do forgive me," she said, "if I ask who the lady was. You needn't tell me, you know." And then, as Challis wavered between disclosure and concealment, put in a word to clinch matters: "Treat me as a friend. We can always quarrel, you know!" The soul-brush seemed to go a little quicker.
This author was a man who fancied he understood womankind--and probably his was a fair average of knowledge in a department where so much ignorance exists. But there was one sort of woman he could not understand--the woman with a stronger nature than his own. He had only mixed with his equals, so far. He could be quite unaware that he was being influenced--could still persuade himself, as a tribute to his manhood, that he was acting from a politic motive. He could make an astute note that his insight into humanity--"Human Nature ... behooves that I know it"--showed him that he could place confidence in this lady. It had nothing to do with her eyes or her outline. It was his Insight.
"I don't mind telling you." A slight hitch before the last word showed that the speaker had just avoided italics. He paused a moment, to be quite sure he didn't mind, then continued: "The original of 'Ziz' was my first wife. So far as there was an original. But exaggerated out of all--out of all individuality."
"I never knew that you had been married before." The wording of this--"never" during the last forty-eight hours!--was ahead of their intimacy, but her hearer accepted it. It chimed in with that luxury of the soul-brush, always at work. He would not on any account have had it exchanged for, "They did not tell me you had been married twice." Nevertheless, he was unaware that he was being influenced, and went on towards expansive confidence, unsuspicious of himself.
"I married about fourteen years ago, and lost my wife within a twelvemonth. My son is a big boy now, at Rugby; he was born just before his mother died. He always thinks and speaks of Marianne as his mother. She has always been a mother to him, in fact. Her own children--we have two little girls--do not realize his half-brothership. We have never tried to make them do so."
"How right!" from Judith. Confidence was improving. She was giving sanction to family arrangements.
"Yes, I think it has been best. Their difference of age suggests nothing to them."
"I suppose they know?"
"Yes--academically, one might say. But knowledge of that is as nothing against the force of a child's acceptance of its status quo. When I married Marianne, the boy--he's Bob--was still too young to pay much attention to the fact that she brought him away from his granny's to live at my house. The only difference that impresses him between himself and his sisters is that he can remember so much more clearly than they do the house where my first wife and I used to live. It is the house described in 'The Spendthrift's Legacy.' I shall always believe it was that title that made it so fetching. You see, you can't guess whether the Spendthrift inherited the legacy or bequeathed it. It gets on your brain, and then you ask for it at Mudie's...."
Judith interrupted. "Of course, the Spendthrift left the Legacy. But why was he a Spendthrift, one wants to know.... Yes, I see. It was a lucky title. But did you always write?"
"Not until the firm of accountants I was with wound up the affairs of Eatwell and Lushington, the big publishers. I was sent to check and overhaul the stock. An almost unsold novel attracted my attention--an edition of two thousand--fifteen hundred in sheets. Its issue had been arrested by the discovery that the author--who had just died of appendicitis, by-the-bye--had taken another man's title."
"I suppose you can be prosecuted for taking another man's title?"
"H'm--no! At least, there is no copyright in a title. It wasn't that. It was for the book's own sake. Publishers don't like other people's titles for their books. I was able to offer a suggestion which made it possible to use the sheets. The bound copies were made paper-pulp of again, I believe."
"I can't see much encouragement to authorship in that, Mr. Challis."
"None at all. But Mr. Saxby, who is virtually Eatwell and Lushington--one's dead, and the other has become a missionary in Marocco--saw reason to believe I should succeed as a writer, owing to the new first chapter I wrote for this book to accommodate the new title. He made me write a novel for the firm, and I succeeded."
"But I don't understand. Wasn't the old title printed anywhere on the old sheets?"
"Printed everywhere! The novel was called 'Amaris,' and there were no headlines. The page-tops were just Amaris, Amaris, Amaris all through."
"What is 'Amaris'? And how on earth did you manage?..."
"Stop a bit, or I shall want Gargantua's mouth. 'Amaris' was a name the author concocted, like Mrs. Kenwig's 'Morleena.' He wanted to be quite sure his heroine's name had never been used for a novel before, so that he could make it the title. But it had, with a Latin subtitle, in which dulcibus and amaris were put in contrast...."
"Never mind the Latin," said Judith. "What did it mean?"
"It amounted to the question, 'Is Life most full of bitter things or sweet?' and the title answered the question. It might have been called 'Dulcibus' for any light it threw on the problem. But it wouldn't have sold. Nothing sells without a snarl or a howl or a pig-sty in it."
"But I'm so curious to know how you got over the difficulty."
"Simple enough! We turned it into 'Tamarisk.'... How? Why, of course, by printing a 'T' at the beginning and a 'K' at the end. It cost something to run the sheets carefully through again, but not so much as burning them."
"What was there about 'Tamarisk' in the book?"
"Not a word till I rewrote the first dozen pages. I had to read that blessed book through till I nearly knew it by heart, in order to work out the idea. But it seemed all right when it was done. I was rather proud of it."
"I dare say it was tremendously clever. But how was it done? That's what I want to know."
"I made the name of the girl 'Tamarisk' instead of 'Amaris,' and then her baby brother can't pronounce it--calls her Amaris; and the family catch the pronunciation, and she adopts the name outright. It was difficult to do, because the conditions implied were those of the bosom of an affectionate family, and the sequel might have clashed...."
"Because...?"
"Well, you see, the girl becomes a Vampire, and sucks the little brother's blood. But I succeeded. In fact, I think the very difficulties of the situation produced a certain pathos."
"I see," said Judith, with a gush of intense perception. "I see that would be so.... Yes, that is the market-cross, this time."
* * * * *
Is the gap above large enough to include an inspection of a market-cross, a pump, a camp, and a village church? Perhaps, considering how little was left of the last--though, of course, some of the walls had ancient invisible cores. But hardly for tea at the Rectory, which had to be fresh-made; rather like the church, though in the case of the latter a few of the old leaves were preserved from the first brew, so to speak. Poor old leaves!--poor conscious objects of active conservation, each paroxysm of which left a little less of the flavour of the moyen âge behind it--a shadow less of excuse for another subscription list on their behalf, or another paper in the Journal of the local Society of Antiquaries. They were being handed down to posterity with such solicitude that whatever of bloom the axe and hammer of Puritanism had left behind seemed like to come off on the gloves of Ecclesiastical Archæology.
Is it necessary to say that the foregoing is only a peep into the ill-regulated mind of Mr. Alfred Challis at about the time that the fresh-made tea at the Rectory had begun to reanimate it? But, of course, Mr. Challis never said a word to this effect to his host, and that reverend gentleman naturally didn't want to talk about local matters. He was sick of his interesting surroundings, and wanted to hear about the new motor-car and wireless telegraphy and aerostation and coloured photography, and all sorts of things that were up-to-date three years ago, and for that matter are still, to a certain extent. About which and other things the literary gentleman was silent and absent-minded, in spite of the tea. Had he been bound to account to himself for this, he would have found it very difficult to do so. Not being bound, he allowed his mind to recognize the fact that he never did talk much to Parsons--you could never be sure you wouldn't give offence!--and to feel that reserve, short of incivility of course, was plausible at least.
For he was one of those unpractical persons who, never having been thrashed into a Creed in childhood, and being liberally ready to doubt any Creed of his own concoction, associated Religions, broadly speaking, with the opening or closing of shops on Sunday, the suppression of bands in the parks, and the singing of the same tune over and over again in unison at street-corners. When he came by chance on the sound of a harmonium making an unintelligible droning, he conceived of it as Christianity going on in a corner, fraught with a quaint old-world feeling to the passer-by, but scarcely to be encouraged by enlightenment. He had cultivated Ritual so far as to be ready, on emergency, to take off his hat and look intently into it, watching anxiously the while for subsidence of religious symptoms without. At old-fashioned houses, where Prayers might be expected to occur at any moment, he used to become in a sense demoralised, and felt lost when he found himself out of reach of a chair or convenient prie-Dieu of some sort. His only really heart-felt expression of gratitude to his own or anyone else's Maker was the "Thank God that's over!" that he didn't say aloud at the end. Messiahs of all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, he regarded as mere bones of contention along interminable sectaries, all ready to fang each other, but kept in check by Scotland Yard. Qualified practitioners of Religion, whether Priest or Presbyter, he looked on as mere survivals of a past age perishing slowly of Civilization. He was not prepared to take the responsibility of hurrying their extinction, and, indeed, was ready to make concession on minor points, complying in literature with the public conviction that the pronoun standing for the name of the Maker of the Stellar Universe, and possibly others, really ought to be printed with a capital letter. We are merely putting him on record--not hinting at any opinion how far he was right or wrong.
Why do we call Mr. Alfred Challis unpractical? it may be asked. Simply because, while he avoided or ignored all experts in Applied Religion, he himself was unprepared with any substitute for it. And this was so even in the case of his own children. He had, however, given carte blanche, by implication of supineness, to the partner of his joys, sorrows, and admixtures of the two. He knew perfectly well that if he could have cancelled the little restored church at Royd, and the Parsonage and all its belongings, and left Royd free from what he counted superstition, of a sort, he would have held his hand--simply because he could not for the life of him have suggested any alternative that would not have worked round to the same thing in the end. He was convinced at heart, even while he made mental notes about Clerical Humbugs who pretended to believe what they knew German criticism had exploded long ago--for Mr. Challis had read whatever fostered his predispositions, just like yourself and the present writer--that if this athletic-looking, upright gentleman and his serious sister--for it seemed he was a widower--were to be suddenly removed from Royd, as well as any religious outscourings of a Dissenting nature hanging about--if all these were cleared away and the village left in charge of the human heart and intellect ed id genus omne, the human stomach et istud genus omne would get their way in double-quick time, and a perfect Saturnalia would come about of Bacchus and Priapus, of Cabiric deformities lurking round the corner for a chance, and Beer. At any rate, he was enough convinced of this to be rather grateful to the Clerical Humbugs for pretending, pending enlightenment. He felt it was benevolent in him to be mean at the cost of his own conscience, and to hold his tongue and leave them undenounced, in the interest of Humanity.
This chronicle has no opinions--note that! The foregoing is only a peep into the mind of a literary man who was never at a University. Had he been at one, many college-chums in Orders would have checked his condemnations. The man one has read with, swum with, cricketed with--cannot be a Hypocrite. Absurd!
Our snapshots of Mr. Alfred Challis's mind have taken long to record, but they serve their turn in this place better, perhaps, than the few trifling incidents of the visit at the Rectory. Consider that the lady and gentleman are on their way back to the Hall, in a golden sunset-light which makes the former resplendent, and does no harm to the appearance of the latter. Judith weighs him more carefully than she has done yet, and the result may be more favourable in such a glow. Quite passable!--is her verdict. And she knows how she looks, bless you, reasoning by analogy! For all her previous verdicts about her companion's looks--so far as they were favourable--have run on lines of intellectual rather than physical beauty.
The reason she looked at him carefully at that moment of starting from the Parsonage may have been because of an impression she had that he had cut a poor figure as against that of the Parson. It had so chanced that Saladin, who had behaved well in the house--accepting small sweet biscuits with reserves as to first approval of them--had, on coming away through the garden, just as they reached the gate, become aware of cats, as an abstraction. Mr. Challis's hold on his collar he hardly took any notice of; and it was fortunate that the Rev. Athelstan Taylor (that was his name) got hold on the other side just in time to prevent Saladin starting for a concrete cat over the flower-beds. "You had, perhaps, best let me have both sides, Mr. Challis," said he. Then had followed a magnificent contest between the Rev. Athelstan and the boarhound. If the former could have been unfrocked, it would have been a Greek bas-relief. It ended in a draw, as the concrete cat vanished. "I couldn't have held you much longer, old chap," said the Rector unassumingly to Saladin, during apologies and explanations, dogwise. These continued for some time after they had left the Rectory, and Judith was really glad Saladin's chain was on, with no one to help stronger than her literary friend, if a cat occurred. Rabbits had palled on Saladin, owing to their absurd and unfair practice of running underground.
"He's a fine fellow, your Parson, Miss Arkroyd," said Challis. He acknowledged it readily; athletics were not his line.
"The Reverend Athelstan? (Yes, my darling precious pet, you did quite right, and it was an odious cat!) Oh yes--he was a great athlete in his old Oxford days; was in the 'Varsity eight. (Yes, dear love!--you shall lick when we get home. Now walk quiet, and let people talk.) Yes--he's painfully strong." There was something in this of implied justification for people who were not.
"I'm afraid I'm painfully weak--by comparison. My sedentary employments don't develop the muscles." But, after all, reading prayers and singing of anthems does not, either. This was in foro conscientiæ--not spoken aloud.
"Oh, everybody can't Sandow. I think that sort of thing rather tiresome, carried too far. However, we are very good friends, the Reverend and I. I like a man that has the courage of his opinions. He's quite in a minority here about the Woman question--or I suppose I should say questions. But I meant the Franchise business particularly. He and the Bishop are at daggers drawn about it. I haven't heard him say much about the other. I fancy, though, he's at heart in favour of it--more than myself, perhaps. I mean the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill."
"Are not you...?" Mr. Challis had a hesitation on him, not like his usual way of speech. That was an amused way usually, a confident one almost always. This was neither.
"I must confess ..." said Judith hesitatingly--"I must confess to having very little sympathy with men who want to marry their deceased wives' sisters. It's a question of taste, according to me--nothing to do with the high moralities." The implied sneer against all moral law was no discomfort to her hearer. On the contrary, spoken as it was by a good-looking young lady in a sunset light, it seemed to him alike picturesque and liberal. But he changed the conversation suddenly, as though something in it had disagreed with him.
"What a capital photographer the great Athelstan seems to be!" He said it with a definite air of "Let us talk of something else." She glanced round at him, decided with some surprise that she had shocked him, but answered without showing it. She was quite a woman of the world, was Judith.
"He's a splendid photographer. You know he took all those photos for 'Ten Years of Slum Growth'--my cousin's book?" Mr. Challis pretended he knew this book; but he didn't. "I made him come and photograph my own special slum population in Tallack Street. But Lady Elizabeth wouldn't have them in the book. She said Tallack Street could hardly rank as a slum, in her sense of the word."
"Was it too swell?"
"She said so. Well!--you shall see the photographs, and judge for yourself."
But the conversation had fallen flat. A chill had come. Even the discovery that the moon had risen when we were not looking did nothing to remove it. We were not young enough, probably, or not old enough, for lunar influences. Indifference to Phoebe begins with maturity, and even outlasts it. So thought Mr. Challis, when rather mechanically called on to admire the silver disc, shot with gold, just getting clear of a purple gloom that was the hallowed smoke of unholy Grime--hallowed by the sun's last word to twilight, its heir-at-law and sole executor. For all that, Mr. Challis made notes in this connection for literary purposes, while Judith thought to herself that this would never do. She must make an effort, or the skein she was going to twist round her finger would float away and be lost.
"I know I shocked you just now," said she.
"Shocked me?--when?"
"Just before we got to the photography...."
"I have quite forgotten. What were we saying?" This was not true; he remembered perfectly.
"How kind of you to pretend to forget! Forgive my disbelieving you."
Challis was open to a recrudescence of veracity. Perhaps it was a fib this time--he made the admission. But as he made it, he was again conscious of the soul-brush at work. Had he perceived the skein-analogy, he might have recognized its first clip round the finger. "We were talking of the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, I think," said he. "But why you think you shocked me I can't imagine."
"Never mind!--if you don't recollect. But Sibyl would have lectured me. She always says I ridicule Moral Law. Perhaps I do, in a certain sense. But Sibyl is the soul of propriety."
"I can't see where ridicule of Moral Law comes in, so far. What you said was--well!--amounted to a condemnation of the taste of men who wish to marry their wives' sisters. Perhaps I misunderstood?" Challis's manner had a flavour of personal interest; the amused tone had gone, and the last words ended on a pause for an answer, with an intention in them of hearing it and going on. The skein would run on easily from now, said the winder. But not too quick at first.
"Oh no!--quite right," she said. "I meant that. For instance--I shouldn't mention this, only I see you guessed it. You are so quick at guessing things...."
"I'm not. What do you suppose I have guessed?"
"Why--about the Reverend Athelstan, of course, and Elizabeth Caldecott...."
"Elizabeth who?"
"Well--you saw her, just now!"
"I thought she was his sister?"
"Oh, no!--sister-in-law."
"What were you saying about them--just now? You began 'For instance,' and pulled up...."
"I was going to say theirs was a case in point. If Mr. Taylor wanted to marry Miss Caldecott, I should consider it simply a lapse from good taste on his part. I shouldn't fret over the moralities. He and Bishop Barham would have to fight that out between them.... Oh dear!--what has Saladin got? I'm afraid it's a hedgehog. Do you think you could keep hold of him, just for a few seconds, while I throw it out of his reach?" This was achieved with difficulty; all the greater from a misconception of the position by Saladin, who thought it was all done for his sake, as a relaxation. The hedgehog was thrown over a long high wall, and Saladin ran along it each way, leaping up at intervals.
"He gets so irritated with hedgehogs, and I don't wonder, poor darling! I hope he hasn't strained your hand?" Mr. Challis couldn't say very much about that. Nothing to speak of! "Let's go on. He'll get tired of that, and I don't hear the bull anywhere--it's all right. What was I saying?" It is perturbing to the non-bucolic mind to hear a necessary and inevitable bull taken as a matter of course.
"You were speaking of Mr. Taylor and Miss Caldecott. Is he supposed to want to marry her?"
"I really couldn't say. Men are so odd. Of course, if she were less angular...." The young lady blew a whistle for Saladin. The intentness with which both watched for the dog to appear from the quarter he was last seen in enabled him to play off a little joke at their expense. For when Challis turned his head, after much watching and whistling, there was that confounded beast, pretending all the while to wait, after a brief circuit of a mile or so out of sight. He made a pretence of not being able to understand motives, combined with great forbearance in not asking for an explanation of them.
The skein-winding had been a little spoiled, but Judith got it again in order before arriving at the Hall, and it would wait for its opportunity. Her mere acceptance of silence in the twilight of the great avenue, as though conversation-making was not called for under the circumstances, had its force. It might have been spoiled by a quicker pace, to finish the walk up; but, if anything, there was a disposition to loiter and to hate the idea of being indoors on such a heavenly evening.
"Your wife's name was...?" Surely the subject franked a dropped voice, in harmony with the beauty of the said evening--a touch of tenderness for its sake entirely. None but a coarse nature would shout against the musical hushing of the wind in the beeches. Let there be no false note in the chord.
Challis accepted this tenderness as a tribute to the departed. He answered, "Kate--Kate Verrall." He need have said no more, but it filled out a sympathetic funeral tone, in keeping with the hour, to add: "She died within two years of our first meeting."
Miss Arkroyd's regret at having raked up a painful memory was so great that she all but laid her hand on her companion's sleeve. "Oh no," she said, still more tenderly, "I did not mean that. I meant Marianne's maiden name." It would have been artificial, and stodgy, too, to call her "your present wife." Better the frankness of a sympathetic nature, and Marianne.
"Craik," was the unqualified answer. Challis wished that his first wife's mother, when she married again, had chosen someone with a more rhythmic name, not to interfere with the general feeling of the foreground and middle distance. For, you see, she then provided this maiden name for the second Mrs. Alfred Challis, whose mother she was also. Mr. Challis had married his deceased wife's half-sister, and would stand condemned--presumably, at least, in the eyes of his companion--for bad taste certainly, possibly worse. He repeated the name, rather crisply, in correction of Judith's first understanding of it as "Blake," but never a word said he, there and then, about Marianne's half-sistership with the original of "Ziz." Was he bound to say anything?
He departed to his room, to dress for dinner, with a disjointed, incomplete feeling that he was rather glad that a mere au revoir had involved no handshake. Could he have trusted himself not to emphasize its pressure unduly? Faugh!--where was the sense of such an imbecile speculation, or the need for it? He was angry with himself for the thought--angry at the way he had enjoyed his walk with "that girl." He brushed her off his mind discourteously as "that girl." Why, he had only known her a couple of days! He even found that an impulse of his wanted him to say, "Damn all these people! What are they to me, or I to them, that they should come into my life, and make hay of a working contentment I have never dreamed of questioning?" But he refused to say it, merely noting what its syntax would have been if he had done so. En revanche, he made up his mind to write a jolly long letter to Marianne to-night.
The other party--though, indeed, it is hard to say to what--retired to her room to dress, not very sorry to hear that Sibyl was not home yet. She had quite made up her mind that if her sister talked any nonsense about flirtations with married men, she would speak sharply to her--give her a piece of her mind. But she hated rows. So if the motor-car broke down--and it was pretty sure to--she shouldn't be sorry. In a day or two she was going up to London, and would go straight and call on Mrs. Challis, the Impossible one, and that would put the friendship with her husband on a footing. She would wear that white chiffon and the pearls again this evening, though; she had looked so well in them last night.
She herself was conscious of no inconsistency in the half-formed thoughts that passed through her mind as she stood before a mirror waiting for her maid to find the white chiffon instead of the black satin; which Sharratt, the said maid, who had found no male in the company to allot to her mistress, had placed in readiness on speculation. These thoughts can be told, but with a liberal discount. She was not the kind of woman--so they ran--that made mischief in families. That was the fascinating, tender, serpentine, insinuating kind--Becky Sharp, in fact. Intellectual friendship was her rôle--influence over men of genius and that sort of thing. Was Challis, as a man of genius, worth practising on? She thought he might be; as a lay figure, at any rate, if not for a specific purpose which crossed her mind at the moment. But it was to be stirred aspirations, roused sympathies. He was not the man to be worked on by Vulgar Beauty. All the same, Miss Judith knew what she was going to look like in this mirror when fully draped, when the majestic swoop of skirts should quench the abruptness of the mere petticoat. Till that came, she could fondle her fine arms and say to herself, "I'm not Becky Sharp, certainly! But to think of the mischief I could do if I put my mind to it!" And then modesty prompted a postscript, "Or any fairly good-looking woman, for that matter."
This story has no insight into motives; it only deals with actions--at least when motives are hard to get at. It is not its concern at present that Judith Arkroyd, splendid in her beauty when she chooses to make the most of it, may have much to learn about her own character--much that she does not suspect herself of. If she does not, why should we?