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
The party that assembled that evening to dinner at Royd was smaller than usual, owing to the absence of the motorists, who had not returned. Some of the chits, too--who were never counted; they were always "those girls" or "those young people"--had vanished also, taking with them an exactly equal number of male parallel cases; for they were flirting fair--there was to be no cheating! Thus it came about that the ladies' procession to the drawing-room did not make up to half-a-dozen, and the men they left behind to smoke only just did so. But then, it was easier to talk, because there was less noise.
Scarcely had the last inch of the last lady, regarded as a total with all components included, disappeared through the door, when Mr. Challis's two friends of the morning made a simultaneous rush for a chair on either side of him. He succumbed, having no alternative, but resolved to pay absolutely no attention to anything they said. He would throw his whole soul into the enjoyment of the cigar he foresaw. There it was--in a box of ivory and madreperla which Sibyl had somehow countenanced into existence, without doing anything to it herself--being brought along in a tray, abetted by cigarettes. But he would light it when he had drunk his coffee, thank you! The fact was, Mr. Challis was acquiring presence of mind, and did not spoil his opportunities now as he used to do formerly when the world of toffs was new.
Mr. Brownrigg the Grauboschite would not detain Mr. Challis more than one moment from Mr. Wraxall, the Universal Insurer; no more, in fact, than was necessary for him to emphasize a consideration he had alluded to in the morning. But he might take this opportunity of pointing out one or two inevitable inferences from that consideration which might not have occurred to his hearer.
He was better than his word, for he pointed out half-a-dozen at least. He then went on to say that it was only fair on his part to admit the plausibility of three or four exceptions that he was well aware had been taken to those inferences. But he was prepared to demonstrate the fallacy of each of these on many different grounds, the least of which would be fatal to the pretensions of his opponents' arguments in more than one particular.
If he had stopped there, Mr. Triptolemus Wraxall would have gone in and scored; and, indeed, double-wicket would have been quite possible if Mr. Brownrigg would have played according to rule. But he wouldn't. Mr. Wraxall struggled to get a hit and a run, but scarcely succeeded.
As, with the exception of Challis and one or two others who listened and looked superior, everyone at the table became a contributor of a vigorous analysis, an irrefutable demonstration, an exhaustive enumeration, a thoughtful review, an indignant protest or a brief summary of essential facts, or was laying stress upon an important point that might easily be lost sight of, there was a great deal of noise. Challis nearly succeeded, by a powerful effort, in abstracting his mind from it and enjoying his cigar. He was able to believe that he only resorted to a speculation as to what was going on in the drawing-room as an assistance against all this chatter. That speculation had certainly nothing to do with any particular young lady whatever.
But a drowsy semi-abstraction was only achievable when the components of the Chaos were so numerous as to neutralize each other, becoming a sustained inarticulate roar. The moment a single speaker, or even two, became audible in an oasis of silence, Challis's attention was caught by his words, and divided fairly between them and what was left of the reveries they intruded on. Such an oasis was reached, as far as Challis's immediate neighbours were concerned, about half-way through his cigar, just as regret began to set in that he had smoked so much of it.
Now it happened that Mr. Ramsey Tomes, who was quite unexhausted, though he had talked all day, and who was seated on the other side of the table, had at that moment just sketched the extinction of the British Empire in consequence of its ill-advised persistence in all the dementiæ of all the States that Deus ever voluit perdere. He had used up his Latin quotations, including the one we have taken a liberty with, and had finished with a beautiful picture of the New Zealander, our old friend, gazing across the site of vanished London from Jack Straw's Castle, and murmuring to himself, "Perierunt etiam ruinæ." Happy in his peroration, the orator sat sustaining a fat right foot on a fat left knee with a fat left hand. His fat right thumb and forefinger held a permanent glass of port; they seemed to be waiting for it to evaporate. His attitude was unfavourable to his figure, as it laid too much stress on a corporate capacity which might have been described as pendant. But the ensemble was majestic, as he fixed his small but piercing eye on the cornice of the room opposite, grasping the eyeglass that accompanied it with what almost seemed a materialized allusion to his own powerful grasp of political issues. So sitting, his appearance was that of a Mind, giving attentive consideration to most things.
"The disciple of Socrates," said he, with a decision and suddenness that compelled respectful attention, "turns with satisfaction from the contemplation of a spectacle that might well arrest the orgies of an Epicurus, or soften the cynicism of a Diogenes, to the fields in which Speculation, untrammelled by official responsibility, deposits--if I may be permitted the simile--the eggs from which will emerge (like Minerva from the brain of Jove) the fully-fledged Politician of the future."
Here an expression of discontent from a young Lieutenant, whose chit was in the drawing-room awaiting his release, distracted Challis's attention for the moment. A word of sympathy elicited from this youth that he had a private grievance against Mr. Tomes. "You wouldn't like it any more than I do, if he had trod on your pup. Poor little beggar's only a month old!" He brooded over this injury in silence, and the orator again became audible. He seemed to have been digressing.
"I will pursue this aspect of the case no further, but will return to the subject in hand. It is not, I hope, necessary for me to say, at this table, that I am not one of that group of indiscriminate Thinkers who are prepared to welcome the germination of the Political Idea in the crude brain of every Sciolist. The outcome of such a surrounding is but too apt to out-Herod Herod. The medio tutissimus ibis, the procellas cautus horrescis that we may suppose to have guided Cæsar's wife, should also serve as a beacon to those whose ambition it is to deserve the gratitude of posterity." Challis was enjoying the cigar too much to ask--"Why Cæsar's wife?"
Mr. Tomes's assumption of his right to the rostrum was so forcible as scarcely to allow of usurpation while he was visibly bolting an ad interim glass of port with a view to going on again. Mr. Brownrigg chafed, and Mr. Wraxall stood himself over in despair. The young Lieutenant murmured a prayer to any Providence that would shape the end of Mr. Tomes's speech, and help him on to it. There seemed no hope. So he thought of the chit's teeth and chin in self-defence. Mr. Tomes swallowed his glass of port with a clear conscience about its non-evaporation--had he not given it every opportunity?--and resumed:
"I must not, however, allow myself to be led away...." But he had to pause a few seconds, to remember something to have been led away by. Feeling uncertain, he repeated: "I must not allow myself to be led away by a side-topic, however fascinating. The maturity of Political Thought claims our attention. Whether we contemplate the vast areas of controversy laid bare to the scalpel of the Political Analyst in connection with the aspirations of the Socialist pure and simple, the Anarchist pure and simple, or the Nihilist pure and simple, or differentiate by a closer scrutiny the theories of the Socialist-Anarchist, the Socialist-Nihilist, or the Nihilist-Anarchist, we are driven irresistibly to the same conclusion--that Omniscience is still in its infancy. There is one element which all schemes for the Readjustment of the Universe have in common--namely, that each differs on some vital point from the whole of its neighbours. Do not let us be discouraged by this. Let us rather be content to infer from it the dangers that await those who advocate rash departures from the existing order of things, and to recognize, in the discrepancies attendant on the consolidations of Political Opinion in the thousand and one groups into which it crystallizes, the indisputable fact that the Index-finger of the Political Horizon is the maintenance of the status quo. I trust I make myself clearly understood."
Mr. Tomes did not mean to stop for some time yet, but breath was necessary to him, as to others, and he had got blown over those groups that crystallized. He knew that his last words would make all his hearers speak at once, and they did. In the Chaos of their joint remark was concealed a statement apiece that Mr. Tomes had most lucidly expounded the one great object of each one's several scheme, and that the existing order of things would remain thereby much more truly the same--would have a much more heart-felt identity than any mere banal and Philistine letting-alone could confer upon it. The choral character of the performance made the warning check of Mr. Tomes's outspread hand plausible.
"Pardon me one moment," said he, with recovered breath. "The point I wish to lay stress upon is this: While the compass of the Political Mariner points incontestably to the dangers of quitting a safe anchorage, the Voice of Enlightenment enjoins that all new schemes of a subversive nature should be looked at on their merits, and rejected on their merits. This is what I understand by an Enlightened Conservatism. Rejection without examination is the programme of the Mere Bigot. I am sure Sir Murgatroyd will appreciate my meaning."
Sir Murgatroyd, thus appealed to, seized his opportunity, and dexterously annexed the rostrum. He contrived to embark on a trip through the pamphlet he had written, which claimed for William the Conqueror the position of the earliest pioneer of Socialism.
Just as he was within a measurable distance of his demonstration that the Feudal System contained in itself solutions of all difficulties such as the present age meets by propounding a huge variety of remedies and calling them all Socialism, noises of arrival interrupted him, and were followed by an incursion of the motorists, very tired and greedy, after a delay due to civilization, which prescribes soap and water before meals, and a curb on one's impatience till the said meals can be laid on the table. The absence of snorts without occasioned remark, and compelled a grudging disclosure that the last time the motor broke down nothing could bring it to the scratch again; and it had been left behind ten miles off, the party having come home on a mean hired vehicle. Their faith that this breakdown was abnormal and exceptional, and a typical example of the sort of thing that never occurs again, was touching and beautiful.
Mr. Triptolemus Wraxall was glad of the interruption. He had not asserted himself, and felt that he was a mistake, in that society. His forms of thought were more studious and reflective--sounder altogether! One feels this when one has not asserted oneself, and bounced.
Mr. Brownrigg was sorry. He had made up his mind to point out something, but had not quite made up his mind what it was to be; merely that it would redound to the credit of Graubosch. Why should not he point out, and venture to call your attention to, like other people? However, the others were the losers.
Mr. Challis and the young Lieutenant were both very glad, but with a difference. The former thought fit, for some reason, to represent to his conscience that his gladness was due to a release from intolerable boredom, and certainly had nothing to do with any young woman in the drawing-room. The latter made no bones about it, but simply ran, the moment the excuse came. Even so would the little beggar Mr. Tomes trod on have gone for a saucer of milk.
* * * * *
Challis passed the young soldier on the landing, he having found his chit on the bottom stair of the next flight, devoting herself to the little beggar, who had not been welcomed in the drawing-room, owing to human prejudices. The chit had been so bored in the absence of her counterchit, as the Lieutenant might be called, that she had found it necessary to send for Cerberus. That was the little beggar's baptismal name. Challis passed on into the drawing-room, breathing a prayer that all would be well. What his foreboding was we do not know.
He thought it necessary to deny his own accusation against himself that he had been pleased at the Lieutenant running on in front of him to join the ladies first, that he might thereby seem even-minded on the question of his own anxiety to do so. He denied it, and to satisfy himself of the strength of his position, walked in indifferently. He emphasized his denial by spending no more than a remark or two on Lady Arkroyd, who, he thought, showed a lack of her usual cordiality, as though she had read a disparaging review. He inquired a little whether she found the ride to Thanes pleasant, and so on; and then went at once to the other end of her daughter's sofa--not a very long one. Indeed he could hardly do otherwise, as Judith certainly transferred her fine eyes from him to its vacant corner-cushion. He was a little nettled at finding he wanted an excuse for his alacrity.
We have read in some novel that the reason women are so fond of unprincipled men is that they know the latter can and will enjoy their society thoroughly, and never vex their souls with any questions as to what that society may mean or lead to for either of them. They, the women, will do the drawing the line, and that sort of thing. Why be prigs? Now Challis was scarcely a prig, and he was certainly not an unprincipled man. If he had been the one, he would have thought much more talk necessary with the mother before monopolizing the daughter; if the other, his choice of a satisfaction would have been as candid as his young soldier's had been--as the little beggar's always was. Whether the authoress of this novel was talking wisely or not, who shall say? Broadly speaking, profligates are better company than prigs. Coeteris paribus, mind you!
This is all by the way; will very likely be deleted before this present writing goes to press. Miss Arkroyd was certainly not under any necessity to speculate on the matter. She knew perfectly well that Mr. Challis, married man or no, was going to anchor at the far end of her sofa as soon as he had got through that silly pretence of chatting with her mother. And she had retired from a colloquy with this same mother--whose influence was not strong over her, and with whom something had disagreed, she thought--with that end in view. Sibyl wasn't here, with her nonsense, and she should do as she liked. Nay, more!--she would at once say something to show her independence of Sibyl's nonsense.
"We thought you were never coming up." She decided to make it we, not I, on the whole. Challis's vanity suspected the substitution, recognizing in it a maiden-of-the-world's prudence, and applauded it. But a recollection of what a letter he was going to write to Marianne prompted a protest. He couldn't afford to enjoy his position too much, without loss of self-respect. How important one's self-respect is!
"We were having some very interesting talk about Politics. Your brother and sister and Lord Felixthorpe came back and interrupted it." There was great detachment in this, but it was overdone; too much like "pointing out" to a polypus that his tentacles were slipping.
Ought her response, thought Judith, to show pique at her quarry's independence--at his contentment to be away from her society? Much too soon!--was her verdict, passed, but not formulated. It would be just like a girl in her first season. And she had not known this man much above forty-eight hours. She was not going to behave like that child in the passage, whose pretty sing-song voice chimed with her young soldier's outside when Challis opened the door to come in just now. Judith felt certain what she was saying was "I was so saw-ry for you having to talk Pawlitics when you might have been up here with me and this dahling pup." Her imagination committed itself to the words, musical drawl and all; but negatived this sort of thing in her own case.
"I should like to have been there to hear it," she said. "What were they talking about? The usual thing, I suppose?"
Challis felt she was an honourable polypus, in whose tentacles he could trust himself. "I can't say," said he. "I'm too recent to know what is or isn't usual. You'll hear the supplement immediately. There they are, coming upstairs!"
The lady remained silent, listening handsomely. The thought in Challis's mind--to the effect that she was the antipodes of Marianne, in looks--was so irrelevant and inappropriate that he gave it notice to quit, incontinently. But he could not serve the notice without admitting possession. He could, though, as a per contra, do a little mechanical forecasting of his letter to Marianne. Yes--his course was clear; he would tell his wife how absurdly unlike her in all respects this queenly young woman was; might even go the length of wondering how the partner of her joys and sorrows would be able to live with so much dignity always taking place in his neighbourhood. Would that be like reminding Marianne of her homeliness, though? Oh no!--he would take care of that. Still, if Marianne had been just one shade less homely, it would have been easier. Never mind!
The voices on the stairs gathered audibility. Oh yes!--there was papa and the Feudal System. Judith could hear that, plain enough. How sick she was of William the Conqueror! And Mr. Tomes, of course, just as usual! But we mustn't speak too loud, or Mrs. Tomes would hear. What a fool that woman was! But Mr. Challis didn't know her. He must do so, in the interests of his next book. All which, in a voice dropped to confidence-point, tended to engage Mr. Challis's cogs--the simile is an engineering one--in Miss Arkroyd's wheel.
What was that Mr. Tomes was saying? Something or other was to be relegated to the Limbo of departed something-elses. If only those young people wouldn't make such a noise with the puppy, we should hear! Why were things always relegated to Limbos, and why was nothing ever sent to Limbos except by relegation? The question was Challis's. But he was talking at random, for reasons. So was Judith, perhaps, when she said absently: "I have noticed that, too." She was listening carefully to hear if her sister and her co-motorists were following. "I suppose they all came in famished," she added.
"Didn't you see them when they came in?"
"I heard them."
"Didn't they sound famished?"
"Not especially. I didn't pay much attention. As long as no bones are broken.... They won't be coming up for some time yet." There was in her voice a very clear implication of relief. The inference was that we, in this sofa-haven, should not be disturbed. Its correctness was soon manifest. No two oratorically-disposed gentlemen, well wound up, ever disturb a chat in a corner, further than mere shouting goes. And Sir Murgatroyd and the sitting member for Grime were wound up to a high pitch of agreement about what constituted an Enlightened Conservatism, and each was anxious to supply the next link in the chain of Syllogism, and get the credit of it. So they shouted against each other all the way upstairs, and only lulled very slightly when they reached the drawing-room.
Mr. Brownrigg and Mr. Wraxall, on the other hand, were aux grands éprises on a vital question--never mind what; nobody knew or cared!--which underlay the whole of their argument. Mr. Wraxall had been unable to permit an inference of Mr. Brownrigg's to pass unchallenged, and Mr. Brownrigg had impugned the data on which Mr. Wraxall's objections were founded. Mr. Wraxall had replied that something or other had been clearly laid down as a safe principle by Baker, and Mr. Brownrigg had pointed out that the fallacy of Baker's assumptions had been exhaustively dealt with by Smith. Mr. Wraxall had counter-pointed out that Smith's penetrating insight into everything else had led him into error in this one particular; and had laid stress upon the fact that Hopkins, the weight of whose opinion it was impossible to deny, had endorsed the opinions of Baker. Mr. Brownrigg had then become patronizing, and went so far as to warn Mr. Wraxall not to be led away by the plausibility of Hopkins. Who then, being a weak controversialist, had rashly appealed to Mr. Ramsey Tomes to countenance the authority of Hopkins. But that gentleman only gave a weighty shake to a judicial head, claiming at once profound thought in the past, and forecasting just censure to come. He feared that the insidious ratiocinations of Hopkins were a rock we all split upon in the forest of youth, and an ignis fatuus to mislead the mariner in the ocean of dialectical difficulty that chequered our steps in later life.
The controversy, of which the foregoing is a condensation, had passed the quarrelsome point when the disputants arrived in the drawing-room, shutting out the melodious trill of the chit, the squeaks of the little beggar, and the lieutenant's bass voice, saying, "He and the kitten were having a high old time with my boots early this morning." The argument was in the mutual-amends stage, and Mr. Brownrigg was enlarging on the enthralling and irresistible fascination of Hopkins's style, while Mr. Wraxall was equally eloquent on the almost Nicholsonian vigour and expansiveness of Smith's. They were then separated, and presently the insurer was audible afar, enlarging to Lady Arkroyd on a scheme for insuring against damage at the Wash, in which she was much interested; while the Grauboschite was mentioning some further details of that great man's system to Mrs. Ramsey Tomes. Who, however, only said: "I think my husband would like to hear that," or "Have you mentioned that to Mr. Tomes?" but gave no sign of receiving, or of ever having in her life received, an idea on her own account. The Baronet and the M.P. simply went on, like the water coming in when the ball-cock has stuck, and nobody will be at work till Monday.
All this is only to impress on the story the quiet of that sofa-haven, and to justify Judith for feeling practically out of reach of interruption if she should be inclined to carry on the skein-twisting a little prematurely--that is, without waiting for a visiting acquaintance with the probably plebeian wife, to put her friendship with the husband on an ascertained footing. Now Judith was not without a well-defined motive for the skein-twisting, as was hinted at the end of our last chapter. We rather think that if she had not been she would have suspected something abnormal in Challis's matrimonies from his manner when he said "Craik." Women are as sharp as all that--oh dear, yes!
After a little discursive chat to make sure that no floating interruption would desert the other group-units and bear down on their haven, Judith was seized with a sudden intense apprehension that Mr. Challis could write a tragedy. She can have had very slight grounds for this conclusion; she had almost no knowledge of that author's work, as we have seen. But she relied on his vanity to make him take an easy-going view of any claims she had to pronounce him Shakespeare. Pleasing verdicts soothe the cavils of incredulous modesty, and suggest unsuspected data in the bush. But he was bound to make some sort of protest. It would never do to say he rather thought he could.
"What makes you think that?" he said.
"I can't say. It has nothing to do with anything I have read of yours. I think it is something in yourself makes me think so." It was as well to head off any discussion of what she had read; and an ounce of personality is worth a ton of mere evasion. The fine eyes examined Mr. Challis's intelligent brow carefully to see what it was in himself that made their owner think so. His own watched them as though expecting their conclusion would be registered shortly.
"I have written a couple of comedies," said he, to help. "But no tragedy, so far." And from thence a certain reality crept into the conversation, which up to that moment had been rather words for words' sake, or, perhaps it should be said, for their speaker's sake. For so much talk that sets up to be interchange of ideas is uttered to convince the speakers they are conversing, and to make them plausible to themselves and each other.
"You have written for the stage, then. That is what I meant. Have you had anything performed yet? Forgive my not knowing."
"There is nothing to know that you could have known. One of the comedies, 'Aminta Torrington,' is to come out after Christmas. The other, 'Widow's Island,' is on the shelf. Nobody appreciates it."
"Do you see a great deal of theatrical people?" Now, Challis had wanted the eyes to be interested about his plays--to abet the speaker in a curiosity she ought to have felt. But no matter: that would wait.
"I see a great many. What makes you ask in such an interested way?"
"Because I want to know. I have a reason. I'll tell you sometime." Whereat the mercury in the thermometer of this lady and gentleman's intimacy went up a degree distinctly. So much was implied in the word "sometime." Not very easy to summarize, certainly--but there, all the same! It ratified anticipation of future intercommunications, on the surface of it. Also, it hinted at confidences to come. But let us be just to Judith here. She never meant it as another wind of the skein. She was honestly unconscious this time, thinking frankly of an interest of her own. She continued: "Tell me a good deal about them. Why doesn't one know more of them?"
"I didn't know one didn't. That's nonsense, or sounds very like it. But we know what we mean. I'll state it clearly, to save trouble. The question is, 'Why do swell young women that are presented at Court, and go to balls in the season, and sit in carriages at Ascot, and see polo-matches at Hurlingham, and get married at St. George's, Hanover Square' ... is that right so far?..."
"That will do very well, at any rate." Judith said this without a laugh, where there might have been one. "Go on, Mr. Challis."
"Why does this sort of young woman not meet more actresses and actors in the society she lives in? Well, I can tell you the answer--at least, I can tell you my opinion, if you ask it."
"Yes, I do. What is it?"
"They are always at the play, the actors and actresses, either on the stage or in the boxes. Or the pit. Or the gallery. I can't answer for the whole profession. But that's my experience."
"I have always been told they were so disreputable. Are they?"
"My dear Miss Arkroyd, what a very old-fashioned idea!" Challis laughed outright. "No!--they are just like everybody else as to manners and morals, and that sort of thing. They are not monks and nuns, certainly. But such a many folk are not that."
Judith looked at him doubtfully. Was not that rather the way men sometimes talk, throwing dust in the eyes that want to distinguish right from wrong? Monks and nuns, as we all know, are people that want to deprive you and me of cakes and ale. But what is meant by cakes and ale? She would push a test question home. If Mr. Challis had a grown-up daughter, she asked, would he let her go on the stage, if she wished it very much, and had a turn for it? Of course he would, was his answer, without hesitation. Why should he not? This seemed to decide Judith on an extension of confidence.
"I will tell you why I am asking. I know a girl ... well! I should say woman ... who wants to go on the stage. But it seems impossible. What her capabilities would be I cannot say. But it seems hard that she should be unable to give them a trial."
"Why cannot she?"
"Her family oppose it; or rather, she knows they would oppose it if the proposal took form. At present she only knows that they treat the idea with derision--as something hardly worth ridicule."
"But why?--if she has it at heart."
"Respectability. Position. Balls in the season. Carriages at Ascot. St. George's, Hanover Square. Family, in short!"
"Tell me more about this friend. Why does she suppose she has qualifications? She must have had some experience to convince her?"
Judith stopped to consider a few seconds. "Yes, I can tell you that," she said. "She played in the 'Antigone' a couple of years ago. You know my brother and his friends played it in London, and got the female parts played by women. Of course, at Cambridge it was the boys themselves."
"Did you think her performance good?"
Judith sticks a little over her answer, but it comes. "Not perfectly satisfactory--not to me, at least. But everyone else spoke so well of it that I may have been mistaken."
"Yet you would encourage her to make a very hazardous experiment, and to incur the displeasure of her family, on the strength of no more than what you now tell me. Do allow me to say that your friend ought to have more experience...."
"She ought to keep out of the water till she can swim," Judith struck in. "I know the sort of thing. What people always say! But can you wonder that she thinks it hard that she isn't allowed to go in at the shallow end of a swimming-bath; and all because of the merest Mrs. Grundy?"
"Not quite the merest Mrs. Grundy. Moderately mere, suppose we say! The actress who fails is in a sorry plight...."
"She wouldn't fail." Judith interrupted again, a little impatiently. "At least--I mean--she wouldn't fail altogether. But, of course, she would take her chance of that. Why should she not try, if she chooses to run the risk?"
Challis was watching her image in a mirror as she said this, and thought he saw a blush-rose tinge creeping over the cheek. Surely she was taking this friend's case very much to heart. An idea crossed his mind, and he schemed a test of its truth--a question he would ask.
"Is she beautiful? That would help matters."
The eyes in the mirror turned, and Challis had to withdraw his own suddenly. You know how one feels caught, when a reflection in a glass suddenly transfixes one? It is like conviction of treachery--quite unlike the direct transaction analogous to it. But he need not have been so conscious; as he saw, when a furtive glance back showed him that the reflection was not looking at him, but at Miss Arkroyd, at her corner of the sofa.
"Beauty is so much a matter of opinion," said she. "No doubt she herself is convinced her allowance of it is enough for working purposes." She stopped a moment, listening to sounds approaching--the motor-party audible on the stairs. Then, as she began to get up from the sofa, she said quickly, "If you think you can be of any use to her--with introductions and so on--I will tell you who she is. Sometime; not now. There they are!" The interview was at an end, and Challis prepared to merge in a world he was sure would be less interesting. However, he felt some curiosity to hear the tale of the motor disaster.
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
The chit and her young officer felt unequal to remaining outside, against the tidal wave of the returned motorists. Occasional suspension is necessary to the greediest flirtation, to give it a flavour of stolenness; else it loses its character, and palls. This is our surmise as to why these young people allowed themselves to be swept into the drawing-room by the current. Cerberus seemed to have been withdrawn. It is not necessary to the story to know whether the little beggar had or had not disappointed his backers. No questions were asked.
The way in which the motor-party ignored their accident was more like the concerted vigour of artillerymen in charge of a gun than any mere philosophical submission to the will of Fate. Practically the machine's twenty-horse-power had brought them in triumph to the door exactly at the time appointed. A trivial excursion into non-fulfilment of its destiny was not the poor motor's fault, nor its inventor's, nor its maker's, nor its chauffeur's. It was all due to a little bit of original sin in the heart of a hexagon nut, which, having heard that the only key that it could be got at with was mislaid, immediately went slack. It resisted the importunities of a screw-hammer, and demanded a box-key. Like some minute organism of humanity--a spiteful medulla oblongata, say!--endowed with powers of striking work, it had paralyzed the whole structure. But, unlike the medulla oblongata, it could be set right in five minutes as soon as we had a proper box-key. Therefore it was as clear as noonday that the mishap, as an incident in the History of Motoring, hadn't happened at all. It was by-play--didn't count!
The expedition had been a great success. Its object had been attained; like that of the scout who locates the enemy, but leaves his horse behind. When you have seen premises that are the very thing, what does it matter how you get home? For the purposes of the Great Idea, these premises were the very thing. Three large waterwheels, one overshot, ninety-four-horse-power in all, and the most glorious oak- and beechwoods coming down to the waterside. And the most interesting fourteenth-century pound William Rufus had ever seen. He and his friend Scipio were fascinated with the place, and enthusiastic about the Great Idea. But while apt to feel pique at any doubt thrown on the wisdom of the scheme, the latter was not prepared to forego the luxury of making fun of it himself.
"No historical associations," said he, with perfect deliberation of manner, "could supply a more healthy stimulus to the production of what I believe are called Art Objects. The church, a most interesting example of several styles, has been judiciously restored in one--I forget which--and the castle, some portions of which are previous to something very early--I forget what----"
"Suppose you shut up, Scip," said his friend. "You're never in earnest about anything. No--it really is the most delightful place I've ever seen. You wouldn't look so scornful if you could see it, Ju. And as for its suitability, I don't see how there can be any question about that."
His sister Sibyl's practical mind--her manner laid claim to one--went straight on to details. "The only thing," she said, "that I didn't see a place for was the ivorycarvers' shop."
"Couldn't one of those places in the roof be converted?" her brother asked.
"Too hot in the summer," said Sibyl decisively. "I can see the weaving-sheds, and the jewellery-shops, and the bookbinder's department, and the printing-house, and the woodblock-cutter's little shop round by the stairs, and the ceramic works--(only we really must be sure that chimney-shaft will be any good)--and the bronze-casters, and the printed fabrics, and the type-writing de luxe for private circulation." She checked off each department on her fingers, imagining clearly--so Mr. Challis, who was watching her, thought--the place in which it was to be located. Then she came to her exception--"But where on earth these tiresome ivorycarvers are to be put I can't imagine!"
Her brother, with perfect gravity, accepted the difficulty as one to be wrestled with. "I don't see why they need be downstairs at all," said he. "Why not put them in--well!--if not in the roof, why not in that room beyond the Art-needlework schools?"
"We can't conveniently have boys and young men passing and repassing." Sibyl was giving it serious thought; no doubt of that! She added with conviction: "We shall have to build in the end; so we may as well look the matter in the face."
"What do you want with ivorycarvers?" Thus Judith, with a near approach to a yawn. It never came off, owing to good breeding; but Mr. Challis noted to himself that it would have been statuesque had it done so. Marianne's yawn was not statuesque. He could recall cases in point.... What had that to do with the matter, by-the-bye? Challis brushed it away by joining in a murmur of half-protest against Judith's question. The world was listening interested to the evolution of the Great Idea. Politics had slacked down--to give it a turn. And the world perceived, in a doubt thrown on the necessity for ivory carving, a dangerous phase of criticism that might undermine the whole scheme.
Sibyl said, with decisive resignation, "Oh dear!--how exactly like you that is, Ju!" And her brother, "That's Judith all over." Then both asked a mixed question, equivalent to--If not ivorycarvers, why not anything? Why not no jewelery?--no art needlework?--no hammered metal or wood carving? The world's murmur of half-protest--so Challis thought--had really less to do with the demerits of the cavil it condemned than with the obviousness of the answer to it. A mob is apt to mistake its self-gratulation at having perceived something for agreement with the thing it has perceived. Folk sing below par in unison, and no one cares much which way he votes in a plebiscite. This is what Mr. Challis thought, not a remark of the text. He resolved to put it in his next book.
"I am in a minority." Judith dropped her fine eyelids with a hint in the action of formal surrender, as one strikes a banner. "Even Mr. Challis has deserted me!" Challis said, "Not altogether. I'm a trimmer playing fast and loose. A sort of plaid, like Sam Weller." But he had not understood his monde. It was one that knew nothing about Sam Weller.
The rest of the company--all but the chit and counterchit--showed a disposition to talk to each other of conditions necessary to be observed in the sudden inauguration of complex undertakings, these conditions touching points familiar to the speaker, but not within the experience of others. Each would call Mr. Arkroyd's attention to a danger ahead, or an advantage to be attained by well-advised foresight, as early as possible to-morrow, so that Opportunity might be taken by the forelock.
Mr. Ramsey Tomes enjoined caution before all things. He spoke as one having a monopoly of prudent instincts, to the exclusion of a rash planetful of fellow-creatures, or as the voice of one crying "Beware!" in the wilderness of pitfalls Don't-care neglected, with such fatal consequences. He suggested, like the father of him who slew the Jabberwock, that he who only took sufficient heed was certain of success--need not make any positive efforts--could go on rather better without them. One would have thought he meant--Mr. Challis did think--that any commentator so cautious as never to open a volume was well half-way to a triumph of exegesis, and that Columbus would have discovered America all the quicker if he had stopped at home. The story, Mr. Tomes concluded, of the failure of the plethora of rash enterprises that were our inheritance from an otherwise glorious Past would fill a volume. Mr. Challis thought to himself that this was unworthy of its author--rather an anticlimax. But Mr. Tomes was sleepy.
In fact, it was getting late, and a sense of impending adjournment was vitiating the discussion: a little pitted speck in the garnered fruits of its intelligence was growing, and a period of sleepy incapacity was in sight. Winding-up remarks became frequent, such as "We shall have to think all that over," or "We must settle this, that, and the other first, before anything practical can be done," or "One thing's certain, at any rate"--this last being the prelude to several different conclusions. In the end the view that we might sleep upon it was welcomed as an epigrammatic truth, and acted on. The company broke up, finding their bedroom-candles in the passage.
And as the chit and the counterchit tore themselves apart till morning, the latter said to the former, "What was all the fun? Did you make out?" To which the chit replied simply, "I wawesn't listening," in a long sweet drawl. And to that young officer's ears--will you believe it?--these words seemed the embodiment of divine wisdom, and he remained intoxicated!
* * * * *
Miss Sibyl Arkroyd, although she had just professed herself utterly worn out with her hard afternoon's work, was not too tired to say to her sister, over the lighting of a bedroom-candle in the passage, "Come into my room; I've something to say to you."
Judith, majestically undisturbed at anything a younger sister can possibly have to say, is in no hurry to comply with this request or mandate. Rather, she is inclined to make a parade of deliberation, exchanging understandings with Mr. Challis over the heads of the group of males with whom he is retiring to the smoking-room, to end the day with a cigar. Secret reciprocities seem to have set in, thinks Sibyl, pausing on the landing above, out of sight. And these are too subtle for the vernacular guests, and outclass the counterchits altogether. Though, as each of these last is dwelling contentedly on his recent chit, that doesn't come into court.
But Sibyl is wary, and gets away in time to her room. She just hears her sister's farewell speech to the author: "Do consider your readers a little, Mr. Challis, and don't ruin your brain with too many cigars," and his answer: "It all depends on the quality of the baccy;" followed by a testimonial from William Rufus about the brand of the one Challis has just chosen; and then she ends a majestic ascent of the broad stairway, with the portraits of departed Arkroyds looking down from its wainscoted walls, by disappearing into her sister's room.
"What's the something, Sibyl?"
"You'll be angry if I tell you."
"I may." Judith keeps her candle in her hand. Is it worth putting it down, if dissension in the wind is pointing to a short interview? "But how can I tell till I know? Why did you want me?"
"Well--I'll tell you. But you mustn't fly into a rage. That man Mr. Scoop--or Harris, or whatever his name is--married his Deceased Wife's Sister!"
"Is that any concern of mine?"
"You wouldn't speak in that way if it weren't."
"In what way?"
"The way you spoke." What may seem inexplicable here is due to the inability of mere words to do justice to the intensity of Judith's unconcern. There was no need for an indifference such as a humming-top asleep shows to the history of its own time.
"I don't mind waiting till you are reasonable, Sib dear." This little bit of Prussian tactics improved Judith's position. She put her candlestick on a piece of real Chippendale, to express anchorage, but remained standing. She had been looking very handsome in the white chiffon all the evening, and thought so. Her subconscious judgment confirmed this, as a mirror on a wardrobe door swung her reflection before her for a moment. Sibyl had opened it. Judith looked at her wrist-watch as she stood, but meant, subconsciously, to look up again when the counterswing brought the image back. All which occurred, and then Sibyl sat against the bed-end, having disposed of the wardrobe, and said:
"You know you have been in Mr. Harris's company all day, Judith. And I suppose it's going to be the usual thing. But there's no sense in your calling me unreasonable simply because I want you to know what the position is."
"What is the position?"
"Just what I've told you. Mr. Harris ... well--Challis then ... is not really a married man. He married--at least, made believe to marry--his Deceased Wife's Sister."
"Then, now you've told me what the position is, I know. And I may go to bed."
"Don't be irritating, Judith." It is provoking, you know, when your enemy makes a successful rally after a seeming repulse. Judith's last tactical move was masterly. Her success soothed her to moderation.
"I don't want to be irritating, Sib. And I don't think you have any right to talk of being irritating after what you said just now. 'The usual thing!' What usual thing?"
"You know what I mean, and it doesn't matter."
"I don't think it matters the least. But what do you know about Mr. Challis? I mean, what do you know that I don't?"
"Only what I told you."
"But how do you know? Really, Sibyl, I shall go if there are to be any more mysteries."
"Well, don't be impatient, and I'll tell you." And thereon Sibyl, seated on the end of the bed, gave the substance of a short chat with her mother when she came in from the excursion. That lady must have been mighty interested, Judith thought, to talk about Mr. Challis's affairs, which could not possibly concern any of them. She said as much, resentfully, to her sister.
"Well," said Sibyl, "I only tell you what she said to me. She drove Mrs. Barham home from Thanes, and they talked about it all the way. The Bishop had it on perfectly good authority. I think it was the editor of some well-known paper who had heard it from a gentleman who had interviewed Mr. Challis for him. You know how they do?" Oh yes!--Judith knew. "Well, this gentleman had it from Mr. Challis himself, who had begged him very earnestly to say nothing about it. So, of course, nothing appeared in the article."
"What a delicate-minded editor!"
"I think it was very nice of him. Why not? But you always sneer, Ju. Anyhow, that's what the madre said to me. And we agreed that the sooner you knew the better...."
"And why?"
"Oh, well, because, of course.... However, we can't discuss that now at this time of night. I only know what Mrs. Barham said the Bishop said...."
"What did His Holiness say?"
"Judith, if you sneer I won't talk to you.... Well, the Bishop said that if he had his way, he would refuse Holy Communion to all people's Deceased Wife's Sisters ... there!--you know what I mean perfectly well, Judith."
Judith had started a protest, but gave up the point. "I know what you mean. But why doesn't he?"
"Mrs. Barham said he did not feel sure of the support of Public Opinion. But for all that this gentleman was living in Sin, technically if not actually, or actually as well as technically, or ... well!--I forget which ... with this woman." Sibyl paused; the pause was a tribute to the force of the curl of her sister's lip. She ended: "Come, Ju, you can't call her a lady, you know!"
"Did the Bishop say gentleman?"
"No. By-the-bye, I think the Bishop did say man. But, of course, he would speak scripturally. Besides, all gentlemen are men too, but all women are not ladies."
The curl died very slowly on Judith's lip, if at all. "Poor Mr. Challis!" said she. "He doesn't know what he's losing--at least, what he would lose if it wasn't for Bishop Barham's respect for the World. Fancy having the Holy Communion refused one--by Bishop Barham!..."
"Judith! If you're going to blaspheme!..."
"I'm not, dear. I'm going to say good-night. And to-morrow I'll tell Mr. Challis of his parlous plight."
"Oh, Ju, you never will!"
"Wait and see! Good-night, dear." The "dear" was rather perfunctory. And it was not to correct it to tenderness that Judith turned back in the doorway and reclosed it from within. "I want to know what you meant by 'the usual thing,'" she said, and waited.
"I thought you said you didn't think it mattered."
"I don't think it does. But I want to know what you meant by it, just the same."
The return into the room to ask the question added to its weight somehow. Sibyl might have answered more forcibly and less pertly had it been asked during conversation. "I should have thought, after the Honourable Stephen, that that went without saying."
"'After the Honourable Stephen'!... Sibyl!" There is growing resentment in the handsome woman's voice of protest, and a slight flinching in her sister's manner recognizes it. She speaks uncomfortably.
"Well, what would you have me say? You know quite well, Ju, that the madre thinks so too. What is the use of pretending?"
Judith's colour is heightened as she closes the door to prevent someone hearing in the passage--her maid perhaps or her sister's. "I see no use in pretending, Sib. If you and mamma are going to say spiteful and malicious things, you had better speak them out.... Yes, it is spiteful and malicious to try to make out that there was anything between me and Stephen Lyell; it is simply wicked to use the word flirtation.... No--I know you have not actually used it--but it's the same thing. It was that woman entirely! And you know it!"
"I should have felt as she did. Besides, Lady Di Lyell's no fool. Look how you had him to yourself all day long ... oh yes!--I know what you are going to say. Perhaps there wasn't. But some people can get on perfectly well without any love-making. I think that way's the worst; it's insidious and hypocritical. Yes, Judith!--if you are going to flirt with a married man, I would sooner you did it above-board." Notice Sibyl's elisions, and how easily understood they seemed to be. Sisters' intercourse is based on concurrent consciousness of the actual; sometimes admitted, sometimes concealed. These two had harboured theirs from the nursery, usually finding speech for them. In the present case they had never spoken quite openly, though each knew the other knew of her knowledge, and pointed allusions to flirtations with married men had been perfectly well understood.
Judith has been keeping back a great deal of anger--she has self-control in plenty--to affect a certain patronage of a younger sister; albeit she has only a couple of years more to her half of the fifty they share between them. "Sib dear!" she says. "You are entirely absurd--quite childish. If her jealous ladyship wasn't secure against me and poor good, honourable Stephen, where is married bliss to find security? Unless men and women are never to be friends at all."
"Nobody objects to it that I know of. Only not one at a time. You know the difference that makes as well as I do--as well as everyone does."
Probably Judith did, and that was why she said nothing--or, at least, in what she did say made no reply to the last assertion, but went back to the general question. She put her hand on the door-handle to suggest peroration and spoke collectedly and coldly.
"You are quite wrong, Sibyl, when you use the word 'flirtation' about me and Stephen Lyell. Cordial acquaintance is quite enough--even friendship is a little overstrained. Not but that we are very good friends, and should always keep so, only for that fool of a woman! But I shall always think somebody made mischief." She turned the door-handle to indicate the penultimate character of what was coming, but did not open the door. "And as for this Mr. Alfred Challis or 'Titus Scroop'--who is a person, by-the-bye, with whom any sort of flirtation would be simply impossible--he's just a clever playwriter without the slightest pretence to be considered a ... no!--I wasn't going to say gentleman; let me finish ... accustomed to the ways of Society." Sibyl didn't feel convinced, but kept her counsel. "And I have my own reasons for wishing to cultivate his acquaintance."
Now, surely, at this late hour of the night, and after so active a day, and with these two young ladies' respective maids wondering sotto voce on the landing outside what on earth it's all about--surely that door-handle might have turned in earnest! But we all know the fire that seems put out with a spark still chuckling in its core at the nice blaze it means to be one day. Perhaps if Sibyl had said "I ss--see" with less of suggestion that some human frailty undefined had been sighted by her shrewdness, and had commanded her sympathy; and perhaps (even more) if she had abstained from saying to herself, "I thought it was that," in a voice that was evidently intended to be heard, yet to seem inaudible--perhaps the fire would not have broken out again. As it was, the door-handle had a relapse, and its manipulator said rather sharply: "Thought it was what?"
"The Stage," was the reply. "Oh yes, Ju!--I know all about it; so you needn't look like a Tragedy Queen. Pray disgrace your family! Good-night, dear."
"Sibyl, you are a thoroughly selfish woman ... did you say why? Why--because you are indulging all your own fancies--just flinging away hundreds on all sorts of useless fads, and all the while opposing me in a reasonable wish--for it is reasonable to wish to give it a trial--because of a miserable, old-fashioned prejudice against a profession which at least is as respectable as hammering little copper pots and making little bits of fussy enamelled jewellery. I can't tell you how sick I get of hearing of it all...." Anger at mere impertinence does not involve a flush, like resentment against a charge of misdemeanour on a point of delicacy. But one can go white with anger, and Judith's change of colour may be due to it, as she says what she evidently means to be her last word. Sibyl tries to deprive it of a last word's advantage.
"If you are going to take that tone, Ju," she replies, "I think we had better talk no more about it. And how little copper pots can have anything fast or disreputable about them I don't know. But pray disgrace your family, if you can get anyone to help you--Mr. Scoop, or Challis, or anyone." Then this young lady did not play fair, for she said or as good as said that if her sister was as tired and sleepy as she herself was, she wouldn't stand there talking, but would go to bed. But even this was not so bad as adding: "And what all this has to do with Mr. Scoop's Deceased Wife's Sister I can't imagine!" The dry tone in which Judith said, "Nor I, dear!" may have conveyed her views about her sister's powers of Logic, without more enlargement--at least, she indulged in none and went away to her own bedroom rather despising herself for feeling exasperated, but knowing that she was so by the satisfaction she got from an increased indifference to what her family thought about the theatrical profession. Her stage-mania was getting the bit in its teeth. But she could find it in her heart to laugh at Sibyl for trying to support her own fads on the moral repute of little copper pots. Why, so far as that went, the little pots might be anchorites in deserts for any power they had of blemishing it.
As for "Mr. Scroop's Deceased Wife's Sister," that, she knew, was nonsense, because he had told her the name of his first wife. Or, stop a minute!--might she not have been a half-sister? Judith guessed shrewdly. But then--it occurred to her presently--would that count? She thought of this after she was in bed, and was half inclined to get up, and look up the point in her prayer-book.
* * * * *
The suspicion that had crossed Challis's mind in the drawing-room was confirmed by the way his companion had glanced at herself in the mirror, before answering his question about the beauty of her friend the stage-aspirant, more than by the wording of her answer. After all, the fact that a good-looking woman had refused an unqualified testimonial to the beauty of an alleged friend was very negative evidence indeed that she was all the while speaking of herself. But the glance at her reflection seemed natural enough to him under the circumstances, though he was ready to admit that, much as he had written about them, he did not understand women. His conclusion from it was supported by something not altogether natural in the tone of the answer; the substance of it might be no more than provisional modesty, to cover future confession. Had she answered that her friend had a Juno-like figure, a splendid Greek brow and nose, rich coils of dark hair, a stately column of a throat, and ample justification for evening dress whenever warranted by authority--could she have looked him in the face later and claimed the identity? Challis dwelt upon the inventory more than was needed, and decided that the semi-evasion had been skilful, and had shown that its author was superior to frivolous vanities. There was glamour about this: men persist in ascribing high qualities to beautiful women, and only concede them grudgingly to dowdies as a set-off to their unhappy plainness.
Anyhow, even if he was mistaken, his mistake would give him a sound ground for writing as much as he was inclined to write about this young lady to Marianne; and he felt, without exactly knowing why, inclined to write rather liberally about her. Perhaps, if he had had a mind for self-vivisection, he would have found that he shrank from acknowledging the reason he had hitherto flinched from writing about her to his wife; which was, briefly, that he was just too far entiché to feel at ease in telling her how much in love he had fallen with one of the daughters, and how awfully jolly she was, and how awfully jealous she, Marianne, would be if she was there to see. You know--male reader over head and ears in wedlock!--that that is what you would have written, and despatched with an authenticating photograph if one was attainable. And you would have asked for the last photo of your correspondent in return--the one with baby pulling her hair; not that beastly one yearning, with the lips slightly parted--to give as a swop to your new love; because six copies were to come from Elliott and Fry's, and we could have as many more as we wanted. But Mr. Alfred Challis was not so detached as all this; and, without absolutely suspecting it, he was not sorry to be supplied with a well-defined locus scribendi, where all analysis and justification would merge and be forgotten. He felt, with such a licence of free pen, much more ready to go to work with his long letter to Marianne about that long walk to the Rectory to-day. See what a lot he could find to tell about that Parson who wanted (or didn't) to marry his Deceased Wife's Sister! Partly on the question itself--one, of course, of the greatest interest to both--and partly, if not more, because he had just remembered that surely the name of the Parson who took on the duties for Charlotte Eldridge's reverend cousin out Clapham way was Athelstan Something; and hadn't he, the said cousin, been known to come away to this part of the world to take his friend's duties in the country and get change of air? Of course! And then, too, there was the incident of the sofa in the evening. Yes!--he would make the peep into the mirror amusing.
They were new candles all through again this evening--really! ... the extravagance in these great houses! What would Marianne say if she saw it? But so much the better! Candles that have never been blown out give a much better light than restarted ones--who can say why? Challis settled down soon to his long letter, and wrote well into the night. The four candles he had enlisted had burned down to mere housekeeper's perquisites--substitute-justifiers--by the time he had signed himself Marianne's loving Tite; and after a good stretch in acknowledgment of an hour's bent back, had lighted an isolated sample with an extinguisher-parasite, so as to blow all four out together, and keep them neck and neck.
After he was in bed he said to himself that he must make sure that letter went by the first post, or it would only reach Marianne such a short time before the writer. It was very stupid of him, that it was, to have allowed so many days to pass before writing a proper account of "these people" to his wife. She had only had such very perfunctory letters before. He classed it as a stupidity. However, it might end by his overstaying the week he was asked for by more than an extra day already bespoken, and then this long letter would seem in better keeping. That would make it all right.
Chapter IX
HOW MARIANNE SHOWED THAT LETTER TO AN INTIMATE FRIEND, MRS. ELDRIDGE. WHERE WAS THAT SOFA? OF COUNTRY AND TOWN HOUSES. JEALOUSY
Marianne Challis had never become quite reconciled to her new life at the Hermitage at Wimbledon, obvious as was the improvement on her old home in Great Coram Street. What she would have liked would have been that Titus--for she had adopted the Christian name of his nom de plume, not without pride--should become a brilliant and successful author, that a plentiful income should take the place of the modest salary of a subordinate--important, but still a subordinate--in a City accountant's; but that, nevertheless, their old life should go on as it had done since their marriage nine years ago.
She made little concessions and reservations. They would have had a bath put up in the little room next the nursery, on the second floor, with a regular hot-water service from the kitchen. The old kitchen-range might have been got rid of at the same time, and a new one put in its place, with a proper oven, and then it wouldn't have been one long grumble-grumble-grumble from Elizabeth Barclay all day long. They could have had the roof seen to, and the window-frames seen to, and the drains seen to, and all the substantial repairs attended to; and they could have made the landlord do it as soon as they were in a position to threaten him with legal proceedings if he didn't. But really, when you have no means but a limited salary, and a boy's schooling to pay for!----so Mrs. Challis said to Mrs. Eldridge, a friend in her confidence, and as she didn't finish the sentence, we need not. And then the drawing-room could have been made quite pretty, with the same patterned paper, of course, and as near as we could get the carpet. Only it was second-hand when poor Kate bought it fourteen years ago, and the man from Shoolbred's said the pattern was out of date. And as for the beds and the blinds and curtains, it would have been just as easy to have them all new at Coram Street as at Wimbledon. And really Titus could have done perfectly well with the top back attic, out of the noise, to do his writing in. It could have been made quite nice, and would have looked ever so much bigger with bookcases round.
However, it couldn't be helped now. Titus had condemned the top back attic, and made a fuss about the walls sloping in. Of course, she only meant bookcases on the straight-up walls. But men were like that, and you might talk to them till Doomsday. Mrs. Challis left something defective here also, and we are again under no obligation to complete the sentence for her.
Of course Titus had a much nicer room now--at least, a much larger one. What he wanted such a big room for Marianne couldn't imagine. Just look at the way he wrote that first book, "The Spendthrift's Legacy." In pocket-books and on omnibuses! Just everywhere! However, it pleased him, and when he was pleased he was satisfied. As long as he didn't complain! And yet once more Mrs. Eldridge had to nod an implied easy interpretation with closed lips. She--a wife herself--could understand.
Very likely the might-have-been, in Marianne Challis's mind, of a glorified Great Coram Street, with the successful author turning out immortal works in a glorified top back attic, was only an allotropic form of a condemnation of things that had come to pass at the new home at Wimbledon. Very likely, too, it was unconscious on her part. She may never have noticed that the imaginary new chapters of the closed volume of the old home contained no reference to the new friends her husband's great success had brought about him, to the new Club he belonged to, and met celebrities at, to the dinner invitations that frankly left her out, and--almost more irritating--those that followed a perfunctory card-shedding visit that shouted aloud, "Because we can't ask him and leave you out, good author's wife!" The imaginary visitors her fancy saw in the renovated might-have-been drawing-room were John and Charlotte Eldridge, and the Smithsons and Miss Macculloch--not grandma; for Marianne's desire for her mother's presence did not go to the length of cancelling her bronchitis in order to bring her out on imaginary Saturday evenings. And those visionary social gatherings never held a dream of young authoresses, with a strange power of appealing to our hidden sympathies, and dresses that must have cost God knows what. But she never noticed the omission. Nor that of the theatrical people, nor the press people; nor the swells--male and female--who came to sit at the feet of Genius, and be civil to its wife, who, though she may have been slow about some things, could see through all that, and really never went out, thank you!
But a few days' change was just what her husband wanted. That was what she had said to Lady Arkroyd of Royd Hall, in Rankshire, a case in point, whom her husband had met at Sir Spender's, as he called him, and had encouraged to call on Mrs. Challis at Wimbledon. Now, at Great Coram Street, or the glorified fetch of it, no such person appeared; though, indeed, a few inexplicable fetches were supplied by fancy of people who were in earnest when they wanted her to come too. Neither Lady Arkroyd nor Lady Betty Inglis, who accompanied her, had gone beyond civility point--only men never saw anything, you knew they didn't!
Charlotte Eldridge (in this case) knew perfectly, dear!--and backed up Marianne in refusing to go to Royd. Alfred Challis said it was the merest temper; but was he sorry she didn't go?--Marianne wondered. She rather preferred not going, to say the truth, but she would have liked Titus to be really sorry. And even though she had known just as well that he was only pretending he wanted her to come too, she would have liked him to pretend a little better. If he had done this, she would really have enjoyed his absence a great deal more, and it would have helped her to believe she didn't enjoy it. She honestly wanted to.
Because she was one of those housekeepers who reconcile good housekeeping with what they call a little peace and quiet. These ends are contributed to by the temporary abeyance of the household. Scarcely by its permanent absence--that would alter the character of the position altogether. This position was that an unendurable stress of responsibility was borne by the house's mistress in her position, so to speak, of ship's master. The navigation rested entirely on her shoulders, and the Captain meddled. Captains seldom did anything else, and there was no peace and quiet until they were at their office in the City, or locked up in their cabin as might be. In that cabin, as in Challis's case, they pursued some private end which had no relation to the stern realities of Life. It might chance, as was admitted in theory, to have something to do with the settlement of weekly accounts--a remote connection of a vague ideal kind. But the keeping of the log, the regulation of the chronometers, the comparison of charts--well, really, it was impossible to attend to them for the fidget, till the Captain was safely entombed in his cabin and out of the way! And Charlotte Eldridge knew all that as well as Marianne did. She could understand, if anyone could. As for schoolboys, everybody knew what a boy in a house was; hence, broadly speaking, the sooner he was back at school the better. When home for the holidays, there was no peace; and it was just as well to look the fact in the face and not be deceived by any false prophets.
However, there was something to be said for the prophets in that Jerusalem at Wimbledon when the nominal head of the household was on a visit in the country, and that dreadful boy was playing cricket and wouldn't be back till late. This September afternoon there was a little peace and quiet at last, and Charlotte Eldridge and Mrs. Challis could chat--at least, till the husband of the former called in on his way from the station to walk home with her across the common. Let the record of their talk be taken anywhere, at random. Take the images of them, also at random, from any one of a thousand semi-detached villas in the suburbs of London, and, if you choose ladies of thirty odd, true centres of the English middle-class, you will have all the description you will want for the present.
"They're not girls. At least, I don't call them girls," said Mrs. Challis, shutting the pot-lid on the tea. Then she blew the spirit out, because it wasn't wanted any more.
"Twenty-six and twenty-four," said the other lady. Not an opinion of her own, but a placarding of authorized figures for consideration. They remained in view, neither sanctioned nor censured. Marianne left the point.
"Why aren't they married, is what I look at."
"Looks, perhaps. Or short tempers. Either tells. Does Mr. Challis mention their figures? Because figures go a long way." Mrs. Eldridge seems to speak as an authority. Marianne nods agreement as a general rule. But presently takes exception:
"There would be money," she says. "And that makes a difference. Besides, his letter lays a good deal of stress on one of their figures. I'm never surprised at figures when it's those sort of persons, in girls. They have to." The implication seemed to be that the she-toff, figureless, got suppressed--cancelled somehow.
"He says looks too, doesn't he?"
"One of them, certainly. But you can't tell, from men. And it's one thing one time, another another." Here a pause, following a question from Mrs. Eldridge, "Have you stirred it?" and an irrelevant answer, "I don't want it to get too strong," from Mrs. Challis. Then tea. During which the subject is picked up and dropped at intervals, an eye being kept on it throughout. It is like a mouse a cat is warden of.
"I suppose the good-looking one is the one he sees most of. They do." Mrs. Eldridge is enigmatical.
Her friend is almost equally so. "I suppose it's better always to take no notice of it," she says.
"Always better." Decisively, as from an authority.
"The other one carves something, or does art needlework. When grandma was a girl they did painting on velvet--poonah, it was called. Or took likenesses. But then they wore ringlets."
"I know. And their waists were goodness knows where. But they did ruins in water-colours."
"In sepia. Ma has some in a portfolio. Ready for your other cup?" The answer is substantially in the affirmative.
"Don't put the sugar in this time. They're such big lumps.... Thanks!... Yes, that was before it was Art Things, and Liberty's. They were just regarded as accomplishments where there were daughters. Then, if they became old maids, they kept it up. Because they had such families." This did not mean that the old maids of three generations back created scandals, but that our grandmothers' domestic cares stood in the way of their career as poonah-painters and so forth.
Mrs. Challis cut the cake. Some always wait till this stage of tea to do this. But there are many schools. Then she said: "Titus says it's photography has put an end to all that sort of thing. I shouldn't wonder."
"Nor I." But Mrs. Eldridge adds that she doesn't care about Art Objects for their own sake, though they do for presents. She then picks up the dropped mouse she has had an eye on. "Which is the one that slums?" she asks.
"Oh--both! So does their lady-mother." There is a trace of bitterness in this expression. "But only by the way. I don't suppose they stick to anything."
"What does the good-looking one do?" No immediate answer coming, the speaker throws a light, "Perhaps she's a vegetarian, or antivivisects?"
"No, it's neither of those. But I've no business to tell. Titus said not, in the postscript."
"He wouldn't mind me."
"I don't know, dear. Perhaps it was you he meant. However, you must promise not to tell, if I get the letter."
"My dear!--as if I should tell! You know I never say a word!"
Marianne felt she had done her duty by this letter as she left the room to get it. For had she not honourably resolved not to show it, and even gone the length of locking it into a drawer to prove her resolution? And didn't her getting up from her tea show what an honourable intent she had been acting under? Oh yes, she had done her duty. Besides, what did it matter?
"Here's his letter. I don't expect he'll be home till Thursday.... No, I suppose I mustn't show you the whole. I'll read the bits."
"You hadn't had your tea." Mrs. Eldridge felt quite secure of the mouse, as she knew her husband wouldn't come before 6.30, and the train was always behind. She felt so secure that she interjected a remark on another subject--dress. She saw Marianne had on her plaid, and admitted her wisdom; it had gone so much colder. How those stuffs did last out! It really looked as good as new. Then she recommended those little oblong things with jam in the middle, which she had tried and her hostess hadn't; the latter, though, had bought them at the new confectioner's.
Marianne put the letter safe out of the way of spills and slops, and finished her tea. During which the mouse may be said to have remained on the floor, watched. Then she picked up the letter, and after glancing through a page not germane to the matter, identified that which was. "Here it is," she said, and went on reading:--"'You will be amused at what I think I have found out about Judith, the handsome eldest one I told you of. She is stage-struck--wants to go on the boards! She has not said it directly to me, but I feel pretty certain that a "friend" she tells me of, who has these aspirations, is no other than herself. However, I may be mistaken. This is what I judge from: We were sitting on a sofa'...." The reader paused, looking on into the text.
Mrs. Eldridge struck in: "Where was the sofa? Does he say where the sofa was?"
"My dear Charlotte!" Marianne expostulated, "can it matter? Besides, he says---- However, I'll go straight on if you're going to fancy I'm leaving anything out." And then continued, reading fair: "... 'on a sofa in the drawing-room after dinner. When she had told me about this friend, having asked me first if I knew lots of actors and actresses, I asked what sort of looking girl the friend was. I saw her look in a glass on the wall before she answered. And then she said something rather evasive about beauty being a matter of opinion, and that there was probably enough in this case for working purposes. She had disparaged her friend's performance, as it struck me, out of all proportion to her apparent anxiety to advocate her cause, and a sort of confidence that she would succeed. I put this down to protest of personal modesty, as well as the look in the glass.'"
Marianne paused, saying, "I see that," and Mrs. Eldridge said also: "I see that." Whereupon the former said, unreasonably: "What don't you see?" and her friend replied: "Nothing. Go on." Which Marianne did, after a very slight hesitation, as of doubt.
"'I annex a plan of the position showing the angle at which the mirror was placed, the relative positions of myself and the lady, and our respective images in the glass. So I could see plainly by looking at her reflection that she took a good long look at herself before answering my question.'"
"Is there another cup left, dear?" said Mrs. Eldridge. "Never mind if you haven't...."
"It won't be good," said the tea-maker feelingly. But the applicant said never mind, that would do! She liked it strong. But might she look at the plan? She would promise not to read. There was nothing there she needn't read, said her friend. Nevertheless, she folded back the script behind the rough bird's-eye view, with dotted lines of sight to show how things had worked.
"Well!" said Marianne, as she handed the cup of tea--which didn't look bad.
"I don't believe the sofa was half as long as that."
"Charlotte--you're ridiculous!"
"Well, I don't! Now go on reading.... 'She took a good long look at herself....'" Mrs. Eldridge considered whether she should reveal the thought in her mind that Mr. Challis must also have taken a good long look to know. No!--she would not! Whatever she was, she was not a mischief-maker; and to prove this to her own satisfaction, she not infrequently abstained from saying something about a lady and gentleman. She often found an opportunity of doing this, as she never thought on any subject not spiced with both. Satisfaction to conscience through this abstention would be sure to result in free handling soon after. Also, the abstention was easy to her this time, because she believed--rightly or wrongly--that Marianne knew she was making it.
Perhaps rightly, but no outward sign to that effect came. Marianne glanced forward in the letter, and went on reading: "'This young woman, I fancy, is savagely jealous of the younger sister posing as an active promoter of all sorts of upnesses-to-date....' I wish," said the reader parenthetically, "that Titus wouldn't use such unusual expressions. I dare say they are very clever, but I don't profess to understand ... what?... Oh, of course, I see what he means, but it's a kind of thing I shall never understand.... No, my dear Charlotte!--it's no use talking and trying to persuade me. 'Upnesses-to-date'--just fancy!" Now Titus had been in two minds whether to allow this phrase to remain, but had decided to do so, as better on the whole than to provoke speculation over an obliterated text. He might have speculated himself over such an erasure.
"I don't think it implies anything," said Mrs. Eldridge, meaning of course, anything about a lady and gentleman. "I fancy he is only referring to Art Movements and Liberty silks and things. Go on." And Marianne read:
"'All sorts of upnesses-to-date, doing things her grandmothers would have thought infra dig....' What does that mean?"
"Lord, Marianne!--that doesn't mean anything. Do go on. Only what they would be too swell to do! That's all." Marianne continued:
"'Infra dig., while she herself is not allowed to try her luck and face the music. She has the courage for it, evidently. Old Norman blood! By-the-bye, I've been damning William the Conqueror up and down ever since I came. For the old cock is besotted about him. Says he was the first Socialist, and never talks of anything else!'... It's not interesting, this!" She stopped.
"No--that's not interesting. I want to hear more about the girl's looks. Couldn't you find what he says about her figure? You said he laid stress on it."
"In his other letter. Tall and striking. Dignified kind of girl."
"I should hardly call that laying stress on her figure, as such." Mrs. Challis reflects upon this rather paradoxical view of her friend's. She is not as clear as she might be often over her husband's elisions and hyperboles, and does not feel sure she reported him rightly. "Perhaps," she says, "I should not have said 'laid stress on.'" Her friend says oh no!--"laid stress on" was all right. But there was some indeterminateness in what he was said to have laid stress on. However, Mrs. Eldridge excuses further elucidation. "Sure there's nothing more about that girl?" she asks.
"Yes, there's some more somewhere. Oh--here!... 'As to the lovely Judith, of course, she might prove a duffer behind the footlights. But then, again, she mightn't. She's the very thing for Aminta Torrington in "Mistaken Delicacy."' That's the name his new play's to be called. I liked 'Atalanta in Paddington' better myself."
"Not nearly such a good title. No! If 'Mistaken Delicacy' hasn't been had a dozen times before, there couldn't be a better title. Of course, he wants her to play in it. What else is there?"
"'Very thing for Aminta Torrington....' Oh yes!--it's here ... 'and I shall try to get her to see Prester John about it' ... that's what they call Mr.--what's his name?--the manager at the Megatherium, don't you know?... 'about it, and see if we couldn't drill her up to performance point. She couldn't be a total ...' something crossed out...."
"Let me look ... oh no--that's nothing! Only fiasco. It's the same as failure." Mrs. Eldridge retained the letter and went on reading, unopposed. The erasure had clearly been an almost insultingly merciful one, to meet a defective knowledge half-way. She went on reading, scrapwise, half inaudibly at times; sometimes saying "hm-hm-hm," to stand for omissions.... "'Couldn't be a total failure, because it isn't every day ... thing happens ... sort of Court-beauty ... good family ... make a set-off against inexperience ...' hm-hm! ... 'elocution very good, as far as I can judge....' I don't see any more about her." Mrs. Eldridge read a good deal more of the letter to make sure of the point, although Marianne reached out her hand to take it back. The latter lady was looking rather nettled. She knew that fiasco meant fizzle perfectly well, and it was ridiculous of Titus to treat her like a schoolgirl.
Those who know the sort of person this young mater-familias in a plain dress was, must know also what she meant by the phrase "a proper pride." It is easy for superior persons--toffs of birth, toffs of Science, Letters, Art--to decide that this phenomenon is a ridiculous egotism in anything so middle, so Victorian, so redolent of Leech or Cruikshank as Marianne Challis; to pronounce it an outcome of a simple incapacity to realize her own insignificance. Gracious mercy!--suppose we were all suddenly to "realize" our own insignificance!... But really the subject is not one that will bear thinking of. Dismiss your insignificance with a caution! And pray for a cloudy sky, that the stars may not remind you of it.
When Charlotte Eldridge had read all down the next page of the letter, she surrendered it to the hand that was waiting for it. But, even then, not without a glance down the following one as she let it go. Her friend apologized for taking it away.
"I shouldn't mind your reading it all, dear," she said. "But as I promised...!"
"Quite right, dear!" And both these ladies felt they had made a sacrifice to Duty. The letter wasn't to be shown, and a great deal of it had not been shown. What more could the most exacting ask? How many ideals are as nearly attained in this imperfect world?
"However, there's nothing in what you haven't seen that could have interested you in the very least." Having made out a good case for Conscience, why weaken it? But probably Mrs. Challis is unaware that she does so. "No!--there's not a word more about the girl." This is in answer to a question that could hardly remain unanswered merely because nobody had asked it. The negative chilled the conversation. Why was there not a word more about the girl?
A disturbance upstairs caused Mrs. Challis to get up and leave the room. It was those children. Oh dear, what little plagues they were! Presently she came back, explanatory. She believed it was really that odious girl Martha's fault. She would have to get rid of her. But Titus always sided with the girl, and that made it so difficult.... What was it this time?... Oh, the child wanted the iron. Martha was ironing, and of course paying no attention, and Emmie had burnt herself. No--not badly; but a nasty burn! Marianne's style does not favour definition.
The two ladies sit on into the twilight--early, from a southeast wind bringing the town-fog westward--and are less talkative. The slow-combustion grate's first snail-like manifestations this year--for the weather has been mild till to-day--begin to glimmer in a half-dusk favourable to their detection. The children will be down directly to say good-night. One can't talk till they are done with and out of the way. Presently they come, but are not allowed to rush to the cake at once. They shall have some directly. The casualty, Emmie, who yelled, exhibits an arm between four and five years old with a scar on it. She consents to goldbeater's skin on condition that she licks the place herself. But what did that matter when there was cake? All children have but one relation to cake. They want it, and when that piece is done, they want another the same size, or larger. These two were quite one with their kind on this point, but they took the first piece behind a sofa to devour it; even as a Royal Bengal Tiger at the Zoological carries away a horror a vegetarian would die of into his bedroom, lest you should get it and eat it first. But they came out for more; which the tiger never does, because he knows it isn't any use, and prefers to pretend he doesn't care to ask favours and be refused.
"I shall give them a couple of grains of Dover's powder apiece," said their mother. "They've had nothing for a month." This good lady held with the practice of a dose now and again, independent of symptoms. "If it were not for me, they would be left altogether without medicine. It's a thing their father always opposes me about." The words "Dover's powder" were said a little too soon to be unheard by the persons concerned, and the consequence was that Emmie, the younger one, bit Martha, the nurse, going upstairs. However, this incident, with the ructions that arose from it, was closed in time; and a little more peace and quiet followed in its wake.
"I wonder at your husband and that Martha girl. Look at her teeth!"
"My dear Charlotte, Titus quite likes Martha, compared to Harmood, whose teeth are really good, considering that she only takes sixteen pounds." Harmood was the house-and-parlourmaid--a special antipathy of the great author's.
"Well!--I wonder at it, is all I can say. They go so much by teeth. Besides, look at the way she hooks her dress. The whole thing! You may depend on it that Mr. Challis is only doing it for a blind, because Harmood's pretty...."
"Doing what for a blind?"
"Oh, my dear child, what a silly you are! You know perfectly well what I mean. That sort of thing. He wants you to think he hasn't any eyes, and makes believe to prefer the ugly one. Lots of husbands go on like that--only simpletons never see anything."
"I can't see that it makes any difference to me, either way."
"Very well, dear! Look at it your own way. Only don't blame me and say I didn't tell you!"
Marianne wanted to say something sharp to her friend, but could not, owing to lack of constructive power in emergencies. However, as that lady closed with a snap, even as a moral physician who had written a prescription and done her duty, there was time to consider an extempore--an ex multo tempore, one might say.
"I wish you would say exactly what you mean, Charlotte."
"What about? About the servants?"
"No. About Titus."
"My dear Marianne, it isn't any use talking about it. A woman in your position has to expect it...."
"Yes! But expect what?"
"If you won't interrupt me, I'll tell you. Of course, you know I know perfectly well your husband is to be trusted, and all that sort of thing. He has too much genuine regard for you. But I always have thought, and always shall think, that men can't help themselves...."
"What for? I mean, why do you go on raking up? Can't you leave alone?"
"That's just what I was going to say, dear! Especially in this case. Because there's really no need, if you come to think of it. I'll tell you, dear, exactly what I should recommend you to do--what I should do if I were in your place. I should either say absolutely nothing, or if I said anything at all, just make it chaff--talk about his new flame--say you will evidently have to get somebody else, don't you see? As if it was entirely out of the question! Or perhaps that would be dangerous, and it wouldn't do to have him thinking you suspected him of fancying you weren't in earnest. No!--on the whole, I recommend saying absolutely nothing."
Marianne's brain refuses to receive complications beyond a certain point. She picks up the last intelligible phrase. "As if what was entirely out of the question?"
But Mrs. Eldridge is on her guard against making mischief. "You mustn't run away with the idea that I said there was anything," is the form her caution takes. And then, in response to an angry flush on her friend's face, "I'm sure there isn't the slightest reason for you to be uneasy. I have far too much faith in your husband to suppose such a thing possible for one moment.... No, indeed, dear!--even if she gets him to get her into this play of his--and then, of course, they would go on seeing each other--I shouldn't feel the smallest uneasiness. Because look at her social position!"
"What has her social position got to do with it?"
Mrs. Eldridge elevates her eyebrows, and perhaps her shoulders, slightly, as though asking space what next? But she brings both down to the level of her friend's knowledge of the world before answering: "I should have said everything. A woman in her position doesn't commit herself in any way with a man in your husband's, however distinguished he may be. Read any divorce case of that sort of people, and see if they don't have co-respondents of condition. Of course, I'm not speaking of disgraceful cases, where the woman isn't received after. But ordinary divorce cases in Fashionable Life."
"I can't see what you're talking about, Charlotte."
"Then I can't help it, dear. But I should have thought it was pretty plain, for all that!"
Marianne laughs, a little uneasily. "Do you mean to say, Charlotte, that because Titus goes away for a week to a country-house...?"
"Go on, dear." But Marianne is not constitutionally a sentence-finisher. She begins again:
"Why isn't Titus to speak to a lady without a preach about it?"
"My dear child, nobody's preaching. If you were to listen to me, instead of becoming impatient...."
"I'm not impatient! But you know it's irritating, and you can't deny it."
"Very well, dear, I don't then. But let me finish what I was saying. If you had listened to me, you would have seen my meaning. I was all the time exonerating your husband from the suspicion of even the slightest flirtation with this showy girl. I was trying to make your mind easy about them, and to say that even if they are rather thrown together--as of course they must be, because one knows what country-houses are...."
"Now, Charlotte, that is nonsense! Why are country-houses any different from town-houses? What stuff!" Marianne sees a light on the horizon. She knows about country-houses, because she was a girl in the country once. But much of her friend's analyses and insights had been so much unqualified Sordello to her, and had left her brain spinning. She can and will hold fast that which is good, and stick to the country-houses. And clearly, if she can prove that country and town houses are on all fours for the purposes of Charlotte's world--a world where a sort of dowdy Eros dodders respectably about, all the Greek fire knocked out of him--then a stopper will be put on these suggestions of infidelities. She does not see all the connecting-links, but would like to unhorse her opponent somehow.
That lady is also ready to let the issue turn provisionally on town and country-house life. But this is for a reason of her own. She pursues the subject: "It's not stuff, dear. There's all the difference in the world. In country-houses people split up into couples, and there's no check. Chaperones on long walks, of course!--only they can't go so quick, and get left behind. In town, no such thing. And there's really no such thing as staying with, in town, either. Practically! Of course, now and again friends from the country to stay a few days. But it isn't the same thing, going to the Royal Academy and the New Gallery. The Zoological Gardens is a good deal more like, only scarcely anybody goes. Wasn't that John's knock?"
It was, apparently, and was followed by John's pocket-handkerchief--at least, that was how a very loud noise was inexactly classified. Whatever its proper name was, it caused its promoter's wife to fear his cold was worse. He must have his feet in mustard and hot water. But his attitude was, when he had replaced the contingent remainder of the noise--a real pocket-handkerchief--in his pocket, that his cold was nearly well, and no human power should induce him to submit to treatment of any sort; but mustard and hot water least of all. He would go and have a Turkish Bath, and kill himself. Not that he anticipated a fatal result; his wife forecast that for him. It transpired shortly that he habitually set himself in opposition to all her wishes, and went his own way. But in so doing he encountered frequent disasters, his rescues from which were always achieved by her, single-handed, with constant addition to a long score of debt, unpaid by him, on account of which he never so much as said, thank you!
Mr. Eldridge was a person who defied description, in a certain sense; but only because description calls for materials, and he supplied none, or nearly none. He might have been the Average Man himself, for any salient point that he presented. An observant person, called on to recollect what he was like, would probably have remembered that he shaved, all but a little whisker, and given up the rest of him to oblivion.
His conversation, after the Turkish Bath had passed away, was an inquiry if his wife was ready; and, after he had been told not to fuss, but to sit down and make himself agreeable, a statement that it was a good deal colder than yesterday. So it afforded a natural opportunity to his good lady of giving him a chance to enrich it by comment on the subject in hand at the time of his arrival. She did not wish to drop it, having, in fact--as hinted above--a purpose in dwelling on it.
"We're talking about country-houses," said she.
"What houses?" said he; and then, without waiting for an answer: "Oh--country-houses! Where?"
"Don't pretend to be stupid, John. Nowhere, of course! No particular houses--country-houses in general. And town-houses."
"Oh, I see! What about 'em? How's the children?"
"Never mind them! Listen to me." Marianne interjected that perhaps they hadn't gone to bed, and she could ring for Martha to see. But she didn't do it, and no one urged it. So the children lapsed, and Mrs. Eldridge proceeded: "Pay attention to what I'm saying, John, and put that glass down. You'll break it." He did as he was bid. "We--are--talking--about--the differences between country-houses and town-houses." To which Mr. Eldridge replied, "Oh, ah!--yes, to be sure! Well!--you'd have to see 'em both," causing his wife to despair visibly of male intelligence, with endurance, before starting afresh with an appearance of willingness to make things easy for a slow apprehension: "We were talking about the difference of the way one lives, in town and in the country. Nothing to do with premises."
She then went on to put a hypothetical case, to enable her husband to grasp the full range of the recent conversation. Supposing that he had been a young man enamoured of a damsel whose sentiments towards himself were a matter of conjecture--suppose, in fact, he were "paying attention"; that was how the lady put it--would he prefer to press his suit in a town-house or a country-house? She made the question a leading one by suggesting divine solitudes congenial to the development of tender passions, and a climate favourable to the inspection of sunsets and moonrises. So tempting was the prospect to the mind of her hearer that he made a grimace expressive of greedy delight, and gave a low whistle. "'Ooky!" said he, dropping an aspirate humorously. "Country-houses--rather!"
"Any man would say so at once, Marianne." Which Mrs. Eldridge contrives to articulate in a way that implies, Heaven knows how, that their discussion has had application to some particular case--no mere abstract review of the subject. For the apprehension of her husband is reached, with the effect that he says, with an expression of roused interest: "I say, Lotty, tell up. Who's the party? Who's at it now?" But he does not press for information, because his wife checks him skilfully with, "Hush, John!--never mind now! I'll tell you after." His comment, "Some gal, I suppose," suggests some lucid vision into life and character beyond its drain on the resources of language.
Marianne Challis would have entered joyously enough with her friend into the building up of a situation involving only a neighbour's husband or wife, but she would fain have put a brake on the car of Gossip in her own husband's case. The worst of it was that every word she had said so far, with that intention, had only brought about an increase of speed. And now she was conscious that if she put in any protest of her faith in her husband's stability, matters would be made ten times worse. The horses would get the bit in their teeth. At least, his name had not been mentioned, nor the company he was in, before this stupid John Eldridge. All this, or the protoplasm of it, hung about her mind as she began saying, "If you mean ..." and stopped. But she had, even with those three words, put her head in the lion's mouth past recall. Her friend interrupted.
"I don't mean to say a single--word--more, dear, to you or to anyone. So don't be uneasy. But you see what John thinks." The speaker, as she rose to her feet with these words, as one gathering up for departure, showed as a young woman in black, of a lissome, yet angular type; taller than her friend, and with more claim, from personal experience of her own figure, to sit in judgment on other women's. But her complexion is not as good as Marianne's--a rather sallow one, not free from a sense of freckles. However, that may only be the firelight.
John, merely conscious that something male and female was under discussion, had put on what he conceived to be the proper look for the father of a family equal to all moral emergencies. His face would have served just as well for that of a person doing subtraction with a sense of responsibility. This ambiguity of outward rendering of the phases of his mind, of course, gave corresponding latitude to his wife's interpretation of it.
Marianne had a growing misgiving that she was becoming skilfully entangled in the meshwork of an undeserved embarrassment, and floundered in desperation. "I don't the least understand what you mean, Charlotte," she said. "What does he think? What about?" On this he asserted himself.
"No, I say, you know! Don't bring me in--don't bring me in! I know nothing, you know--nothing at all, you know! Mum's the word, you know--always keep out of this sort of thing!" He enforced his words by pursing up his mouth and shaking his head continuously, in a kind of paroxysm of caution. He also turned somewhat purple, and his eyes grew smaller. These combinations put the finishing-touch on the strength of his wife's position. She threw up a new and final entrenchment, and, as it were, closed the subject officially.
"You do--quite--right, John," said she, "to keep out of it. That's all you've got to do." She then assumed quite suddenly a large-hearted tone of liberality. "And, after all," she said, "what does it all come to? Just nothing whatever! I'm sure, dear Marianne, you need not allow yourself to feel the least uneasiness--not for a moment! With a husband like yours! Only think! You'll see it will be all right, dear--just recollect what I say! Now we must go. I'll go and get my cloak--it's upstairs. No!--don't you come...." But Marianne goes, for all that.
Mr. Eldridge, left to himself, whistled a monotonous tune over and over again, and flicked a glove that was on with another that was off. He threw his eyes opener by fits and starts, as if he were trying on a new pair of lids. Then he produced the vanished pocket-handkerchief, and held it by two corners before him, spread out, as though he admired the pattern. Then, as though he decided suddenly that it was not Saint Veronica's, he availed himself of it as a resource of civilization, and returned it resolutely to his pocket. We are not responsible for this gentleman's actions, and can only record, without explanation, that he then said quite distinctly, "Pum, pum, pum!" and slapped his hands heavily together. He added: "Time's gettin' on"--a remark equally true of all periods. Then he listened to the voices of the two ladies returning down the stairs.
"Oh no!--you needn't be the least afraid about John. He's discretion itself in a thing of this sort. And you'll see it will be just as I say. When your dear husband comes back it will all be exactly the same, and...." Here her voice dropped, and John listened hard, but missed a great deal.... "So now, dear, you will promise to be quite happy about it, and not let yourself fret. Won't you?"
"But, Charlotte dear, it's all about nothing...."
"That's the right view to take, dear. That's just exactly what it is--all about nothing! Now let's try and be happy, and not think about it. John!--where are you? Do come and let's be off! I hope it isn't raining."
"Pavement was dry enough when I came in," was Mr. Eldridge's testimony. To corroborate it he went out in the front garden and gazed upwards, open-mouthed. "Oh no--it's not raining, fast enough," said he. Which seemed to imply that perhaps something else was.
* * * * *
Marianne went back into her parlour and rang the bell for Elizabeth Barclay to come and take away the tea-things, because Harmood was out for her holiday. She looked and felt flushed and irritated, but could not have said whether it was with Charlotte Eldridge, with herself, or with this showy girl at Royd. With all her stupidity--and she had plenty--she was not wanting in loyalty to her husband; although it may be a good deal of this loyalty was only a form "proper pride"--that is to say, amour propre--took. How one wonders that commonplace, uninteresting people should have any amour propre--should love those insipid selves of theirs at all! But they have it--the dullest of them.
As she sat there in the growing dusk, watching the slow-combustion stove economizing its coal, and making attempts to consume its own smoke, her soul was doing battle on its own behalf against the insidious siren Jealousy, who came and came and came again each time she thrust her contemptuously away. Had she, perhaps, despised her a little too roundly when her first whispers were audible? Had she treated them too much as an absurdity when her husband's first great success had been followed by a sudden uplifting of him into a world she resented--resented because the only part she could play in it had been a very minor one? Had she taken it too easily for granted that no harm would come if he went his way and she hers--she, who didn't mean to be patronized, whoever else did! Might it not have been really wiser to brace herself up to the bearing of one or two slights and humiliations, to laugh them off and acknowledge that a homely, uneducated woman of her sort must needs fall contentedly into a back rank, rather than to refuse indignantly to march with the army at all? She was not going to be tolerated, and made allowances for, not she!--that was her attitude. That Arkroyd woman would have been just civil to her in time, no doubt; but how about all the affronts and indignities she would have had to put up with during apprenticeship? No--it was best as it was: Titus to go his way and she hers! Besides, her being constantly hatching him would do no good, if there were--that is to say, if there had been--any truth in this nonsense of Charlotte's. But, really, it was all so idiotic. As if she couldn't trust Titus for five minutes away from her apron-strings! Of course, Titus was to be trusted!... Was he?
She got up and walked about the room in the flickering firelight, conscious of her heart-beats, and half-inclined to cry, if she could have chosen. But her eyes felt dry over it, as a matter of fact. She caught herself beginning to feel angry with Titus, convicted herself of it, and reprimanded the culprit severely. Idiot that she was, to be affected by mere unfounded gabble! For she was far from believing, all the while, that Charlotte had any faith in her own insinuations. She fully recognized that her friend's pleasure in dwelling on the constructive relations of Paul and Virginia, Paolo and Francesca, Adam and Eve, for that matter--anywhom male and female, anywhere--was only human sympathy, leavened with hysteria. Had she not helped her, lubens et ex animo, when the improper study of mankind seemed good to their hours of leisure? The study, that is, of man and womankind in braces, selected by the student? But when the model suggested for study was her own husband, in leash with a strange young lady, whom she had not seen, she felt the position of a philosophical analyst uncongenial.
Why could she not be angry with Charlotte? That might have seemed the most natural safety-valve. Marianne had never read "Othello"--or much to speak of else--but she had seen it at the play. So she may easily have recalled Iago's cautions against the green-eyed monster that doth make the meat it feeds on, and compared it with the way her friend had somehow contrived to appear a warning voice, crying beware! to a suspicious soul adrift in a wilderness of its own unreason. She was not so very unlike the Moor in her ready acceptance of the character her Iago had claimed for herself. Of course, Charlotte was a fool, and fanciful; but, equally of course, she was no mischief-maker. Why, see what a perfect faith she had in Titus's integrity! Marianne was angry with herself for allowing a doubt of it, without having the shrewdness to see that she never would have felt one if it had not been for Charlotte. In fact, left to herself in the growing darkness, to brood over her own scarcely fledged suspicion, she could not for the life of her have said what on earth began it all. She forgot all details of her conversation with Charlotte, and only knew that something in it had made her feel very uncomfortable.
Really, one is sometimes inclined to believe that imps of darkness hang about, to run and help whenever they see a little bit of mischief brewing.
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
Marianne's loving Tite did not come back at the time he had appointed--not by many days. He postponed doing so in order to go back on the same day as Mr. Brownrigg, whose society he had begun to find rather amusing. Their departure together was again postponed in order that they might travel up in company with William Rufus and Lord Felixthorpe, with whom both had come to be on the best of terms, after each had denounced either to the other, in the strictest confidence, as purse-proud, rank-proud, toffish, and standoffish. They had collated their respective observations of the ingrained vices of Aristocracy, and found that they agreed. But, then, after they had unpacked their hearts with unprejudiced and candid criticism, they had suddenly volte face'd, and discerned that there was always a Something you could not define about people of this sort. They had both noticed this singular fact, and each was supplied by it with an insight into the unusual powers of penetration of the other. It was a curious coincidence that both had acquired a consciousness of this Something by comparing the courteous demeanour and graceful hospitality of their host with what they found it impossible to describe as anything but the Plebeian Vulgarity of the sitting Conservative member for the borough. Mr. Ramsey Tomes caught it hot. Then look at the indescribable grace of Lady Arkroyd, and contrast it with the dowdy personnel and awkward manners of the political gentleman's wife. Why!--there was a woman, her ladyship to wit, who could be as rude as she pleased to anyone, and the indefinable Something came in and carried it off!
Was it the indefinable Something, or a very easily definable Nothing-of-the-Sort, that brought about a still further delay in Alfred Challis's return home? Probably the latter, in the form of the gradual cordiality that comes to folk living in the same house under auspicious circumstances, and goes on growing till quarrelling time. It was of less importance when once he had overstayed his return-ticket; and the final outcome of two or three postponements, each to await a reinforcement to the homeward-bound Londoners, was that the bulk of the Royd house-party caught the two o'clock train ten days behind the date of Mr. Challis's promised return to his domestic hearth, and arrived at Euston in a drizzling mist, which knew that summer had gone, and had the atmosphere all to itself.
The porter that carried his portmanteau and his game--a hare and partridges, with which was associated a promise of pheasants next month--to a four-wheeler, might have noticed that the literary-looking gentleman and the good-looking young lady in blue said good-bye a great deal--in fact, until a carriage called out to know whether the latter was coming or not. But this porter's name was Onions, and he had no soul, except one that was wrapped up in remuneration. So he accepted fourpence and saw nothing.
But he might have. And also he might have heard the following conversation between the good-looking--or best-looking--young lady and the gentleman, after the latter had made sure that his selected four-wheeler was prepared to go as far as Wimbledon.
"Now, Mr. Challis, I know you're not to be trusted to give my message to your wife...."
"Yes, I am. She's to write you a line to say when she'll be at home."
"Stupid man! Now you know quite well it was nothing as bold as that. No, dear Mr. Challis, tell her I don't want to make a formal 'call.' I want to know her--as well as I know you. And I never shall unless we see each other quietly, when there's no one else there. Oh dear!--if only people I want to know would give me a cup of tea and say 'not at home' to everyone else!"
"I should myself! But I quite understand. I'll wrap up the message to Marianne exactly to that effect. She shall write and fix a day. And I'm not to be there--that's it, isn't it?"
"That's it. Good man! And you understand that I'm entirely in earnest about Aminta Torrington--(all right! Nobody can hear. They're all in the carriage)--and you're to speak to Mr. Magnus at the Megatherium about it."
"Oh yes! I'm going to speak. Honour bright!"
"Very well, then! Now good-bye, Mr. Challis."
"Good-bye. I have had a pleasant time." But Mr. Onions heard none of this, as, while he was disposing of the portmanteau, his attention was engaged by conversation with the cabman.
"Where's Wimbledon, Honey?" the latter had said, as he took the box from him. He seemed over-ripe, did this cabman. He could not fall off the box, though, for he had bound himself to it by tarpaulins of an inflexible nature. "Honey" was not Irish: it was short for "Onions."
"What's the use of askin' me, when you know yourself? Mean to say you don't?"
"I was born there, my son. I've lived there ever since. Likewise, I'm going to hend my days there, exceptin' I should 'appen to live for ever. I was just a-puttin' the question to see if you knew."
"Couldn't say to harf an inch where it is. But it's a place you get a pint at, every wisit."
"Right you are, my son!... All right, governor--just off, as soon as these cloths are tucked in. You never mentioned any 'urry, or I'd have seen to it!"
And then Royd and its luxurious life have finally vanished, and everyday life has come back, as the cab growls through its rather long ride. Challis was paying the penalty of coming home by a different route, and now almost wished he hadn't made up his mind to cab the whole way. But you know what it is when you have a large portmanteau that won't go on a hansom.
If it had not been for the hare and partridges, he could have managed to consider the whole thing a dream. This would have been an advantage; for no one stickles at finding waking life dull after a fascinating sleep-experience. Do not we all rather love to rub it into our waking surroundings how sweet that place was in the dream, how bright those skies and seas were, how lovable that--well, usually--person of the opposite sex was? Are you, if you are a lady, prepared to deny this last item? Not that this concerns the story, for there they were--the hare and partridges. And the memories they brought back clashed with the long perspectives of street-lamps in the drizzle, and the reflections of them; and the male umbrellas and female umbrellas bobbing endlessly past below them, or waiting for a bus that somebody may get out of, just there; and the busses that stopped to shed their passengers and fill up again with Heaven-favoured fresh ones--while they, the umbrellas, waited--and made the hearts of those no umbrella could keep dry sick with Hope deferred. This hare and partridges, fur-soft and feather-soft, though cold to the touch, were full of suggestions of the life that had been switched off finally just now at Euston Station. But then, of course--Challis ought to have recollected this, and he felt it--they were equally full of suggestion of where they were going to be devoured. Was he not going home to Marianne, and the children, and his snug little writing-room looking out on the Common across the garden, where he was on no account to be disturbed? The very word "home" had a magic in it, and so forth: consult Literature, passim!...
No, really, it was too absurd to allow his nasty cynical tone to creep into his thoughts--here in Hyde Park; for that was the Marble Arch, and the cab was making a good record--when in less than an hour he would be back among his Lares and Penates. As he got nearer home he found that the fire of pleasurable anticipation he had lighted began to crackle and burn up of its own accord, without further effort on his part. How he wished he could invent a word for that confounded hypothetical wickedness--treachery or what not--that nervous imaginatives impute to themselves, knowing its unreality all the while!
He had never allowed himself to believe for one moment that Royd owed any of its charm for him to anything but ... well!--a sort of general summary of the charms of a big wealthy country-house full of pleasant people with balances at their Bankers'. So he expressly vetoed the idea that in the dream he was now waking from, as he neared the Hermitage and Marianne, there was any one individual that played a predominant part. He vetoed it in obedience to that groundless guilt of conscience he was going to find a name for. But for that he would have let it alone.
He would have to find that name, to brand the intolerable nuisance; to denounce it by it, when it appeared. Then he might look it in the face unflinchingly, when it told him to snub his memory for remembering so vividly the sunset-glow on his companion's face, that day they walked back from the Rectory. What a luxury it would be to give this phenomenon its proper place! As, for instance, Mental Astigmatism--something of that sort! The more syllables the better! Let him see!--didn't aischune in Greek mean disgrace, or guilt? How would pseudoeschynomorphism serve the turn? Long enough, anyhow, to convince a Grand Jury....
Well, it was this--no need to say the long name every time; at least, until the Jury should be empanelled!--that was galling the kibe of his mind at every chance thought of Judith Arkroyd that came into it. Why, in Heaven's name, should he not dwell with pleasure on her eyes, which were public property; on her lips, which he did not propose to interfere with; on the touch of her hand at parting, which, by-the-bye, had gone the round of the male units as the party broke up? He was not going to appropriate a larger share than Felixthorpe, for instance, whom he thought a very nice chap; or Brownrigg, for that matter! Or ... but no!--one must draw a line somewhere. Let Mr. Ramsey Tomes keep his fat hand to himself! At which point Pseudetcetera--(that would do for the present)--said aloud: "Come, Alfred Challis, what business have you with the word desecration in your mind in connection with this part of the business?" He rebuked the phenomenon, giving it its name in full.
He was no match for it, though; and it ended by scoring. "Should I be here at all," it said, "if Marianne were...?" He brushed the question aside, but his heart knew the end of it. Marianne wasn't....
However, it was all Pseudetcetera, anyhow! Judith Arkroyd was cultivating him from a purely selfish motive--this rather bitterly; and as for Marianne, was he not really glad to be back again, and wouldn't it be a pleasure to ... to present her with the hare and partridges, and facilitate the housekeeping?
As to Miss Arkroyd's proposal to call, he did not know how it would be received. Perhaps he would have to tell Marianne that she really must be a sensible woman, and a Woman of the World.
Anyhow--and he drifted into a self-interested channel with some sense of relief--it would never do to have what might be a golden prospect for his play thwarted. He had only imperfect means, so far, of guessing what Judith would sound like behind the footlights; but as to what she would look like, that was a thing there could be no misgiving about.... Why!--the horse was walking. Actually, Putney Hill! What a much better lot of four-wheelers had come on the streets lately! In a quarter of an hour he would be at home; and really very glad--honour bright!--to be back with Marianne.
* * * * *
When any lady or gentleman comes back from an absence, in a cab with luggage on it--however passionate may have been her or his longing for a corresponding him or her who may have been (or might have been) watching at the door for its arrival, or however much the two of them may feel disposed to
"Stand tranced in long embraces Mixt with kisses sweeter, sweeter Than anything on earth"--
they usually find, in practice, that it is necessary to stand matters over, because of the cab. This does not, of course, apply to where a man-servant is kept, who can pay fares dogmatically, and conduct himself like the Pope in Council. But where the yearnings of both parties have to be suppressed all through a discussion of the fare and a repulse of the unemployed, whose services have been anticipated by your own mercenaries ... well!--do what you will in the way of cordiality afterwards, it is chilling, and you can't deny it. We know we are putting this in a very homely way, but this is a very homely subject.
If that over-ripe cabman had shown a different spirit, and accepted the shilling or so too much that Challis offered him, and gone his way in silence, who knows what course events would have taken in the Challis household? But he not only said, "My fare's nine shillings!" but came down from his box as one comes down from a box when one's mind is thoroughly made up, and one ain't going to stand any more of one's ex-fare's trifling. He also unbuttoned a series of coats, and produced from his inner core a pocket-book, supposed to contain documentary evidence of some sort. It was eight mile o' ground, and three on 'em outside the radius. Challis was irritated at the low valuation put on his understanding by this cabman, and disputed a point he would have given way on had an appeal been made to the goodness of his heart to shut his eyes to obvious truth in the interest of extortion. He was also obsessed by a woe-begone creature who had run all the way from Putney Bridge to assist with the one portmanteau, but had been headed off by Martha and Elizabeth Barclay. Who, thus intercepted, had substituted a moral claim on account of the distance no one had asked him to cover for a legal claim for carrying a portmanteau into a house, and making the latter smell of his wardrobe till properly aired and the mats shook next day. The consequence of which was that, when the cabman had reconstituted himself on his box, under protest, and departed, Challis, eager to make up for the postponement of his greeting by a good husbandly accolade, found himself met by, "As soon as you've done with the man!" and, turning, perceived an injured being touching a soaked cap, and awaiting recognition or execration in a spirit of meekness, but quite determined not to go away without a settlement.
"Run all the way from Putney, have you? What the devil did you do it for? Nobody asked you." Here a gratuity, of coppers.
"Won't you make it up a shillin', Captain? It is 'ard, when a man's been out all day looking for a chance, and walked all over Battersea and Chelsea and round Brixton--ask anybody if I ain't!--and nobody to 'elp me to a job or say the word for me.... Thank ye kindly, Captain!"--here more coppers; this mode of address proving irresistible--"only if it was made up to a shillin' I could get my tools out of pawn, being a carpenter by trade...."
Challis pushed the door to in the man's face with something like an oath. Then at last he got a moment's leisure for his overdue kiss, which he paid liberally, as he said: "Well, it is jolly to be back, at any rate! How are the kids?" For, whatever the malady he had made the awkward name for had been, he wasn't going to show any consciousness of it.
"The children you mean? There's nothing the matter with them that I know of. Now make haste; because it's a small leg. If I'd thought you were going to be so late it could have been rump-steak."
Challis looked at his watch. "H'm!" said he. Which meant that seven-forty was not so enormously late, and really more elastic arrangements might have been contrived. "I shouldn't have time for a warm bath, should I?"
"I must tell Elizabeth Barclay, then. I dare say she can keep the meat back. Only say!"
"Oh, it don't matter, if there's any difficulty...."
"My dear!--why should there be any difficulty! You've only got to say.... Well!--am I to tell Elizabeth Barclay, or am I not?"
Challis decided, and said. That is, he did not formulate special instructions, his words being merely, "Half-past, then. I'll be sure not to be later," and went straight away to get a bath. It is the greatest of luxuries, as we all know, after a journey, and Challis had made up his mind to have one the moment he detected a flavour of roasting, because that implied plenty of hot water in the bath-room.
Those who measure events only by the bounce they manifest--by their rapidity, or unexpectedness, or by the clamour that accompanies them--will wonder why any narrator of a story should think such flat incident worth recording. But observe!--it was the very flatness of this conversation that gave it its importance, coming as it did on the top of the exhilaration of Mr. Challis's visit, and his parting with that large and lively company of friends less than two hours ago. It has its place--this flatness has--in the lives of these two folk we write of, and really accelerates the story, although it is certainly slow in itself.
How very much Challis would have preferred it if his wife had said, "I won't kiss you if you swear," and had then done it quandmême! His mind--a fictionmonger's--reconstructed his reception with things more palatable for Marianne to say, this one among them. Another thing he would have liked, quite inexplicably, was, "Well!--how's the fascinating Judith?" Possibly this was because he would have welcomed help from without to convince him he was indifferent about the young woman. The answer he imagined for himself, which would have been pleasant for him to give, was, "She's coming to see you next week, Polly Anne. So get your best bib and tucker ready!" But there had been none of this, nor the laughter--purely imaginary--that he garnished it with. Only the flatness as recorded.
"Perhaps it was all that confounded cabman," said Challis to himself and a bath-towel like a toga, after a very respectable warm bath--not equal to that at Royd, though--and a cold douche. He had to hurry up to keep his word at half-past eight. But he kept it.
"Well!" said he, as he joined his wife in the drawing-room, where she was awaiting the announcement of dinner, Challis conceived.
"Well what?" She touched the nearest bell-handle. "They'll know it's for dinner," she said, and the remark seemed relative. "Why well?"
"Well everything! Tell me all about the kids, about who's called, about where you've been, about everything. Come, Polly Anne, I think you might unbutton a little and be jolly when a chap's been away three weeks. How are John and Charlotte Eldridge?"
"Yes!--I think you might have asked about them. John has been at death's door. There's dinner!..." Challis made a sympathetic noise about Mr. Eldridge, but postponed inquiry. Nothing made it easy until he found himself a lonely soup-consumer; because, you see, Marianne wasn't hungry.
"What has it been?" Too concise, perhaps. But really death's door, with John on the step, had been the last thing mentioned.
"What has what been?"
"What you told me. What's been the matter with John?"
"Peritonitis. But he's going on well now. Dr. Kitt says he'll have to live very carefully for some time.... I know what you mean, but it's very unfeeling to laugh. Besides, I don't believe he eats more than other people." Challis felt indefensible. Just fancy!--there he was, eating gravy soup all by himself!
"I wasn't laughing, old girl," said he. "Poor Jack Eldridge! Peritonitis is no joke. I'll go round to-morrow."
"It won't be any use. He won't be able to see you. Yes--you can take the soup, Harmood. Mr. Challis isn't going to have any more...."
A mere rough sample of the conversation. It was not unlike others of the same sort on like occasions. But was Challis wrong in imagining that, this time, it was a little accentuated! Was it only his imagination, gathering suggestions from the atmosphere that his home had been that of self-denying endurance during his absence, and that his own selfish indulgences elsewhere were being actively forgiven for his sake? What had he done to deserve forgiveness? If he had known that he was incurring it, would he have committed the offence at all?
Also he did feel that Marianne hadn't played fair. What could have been more genial than her send-off, three weeks ago?--more apparently genuine than her refusal to accompany her husband to Royd on the ground of a real dislike for Society? To be sure, a throb of conscience reminded him of a certain breath of relief--almost--that he drew at the decisiveness of this refusal. Had Marianne been sharp enough to see it? His instinct told him that a woman might have a sharp department in her mind on points of this sort, and yet make a poor show in logic and mental philosophy.
The sense that he was a naughty boy that had been eating three-cornered jam-tarts, and giving no one else any, hung about him, and made him unlike himself. If only that abominable cabman had not spoiled the part he had sketched out for himself on his first arrival, one of exaggerated self-denunciation for his beastly selfishness, and tragi-comical commiseration for Marianne as Penelope or Andromeda! It would then have come so much easier to deliver that message from Judith Arkroyd. And now! Just look at now! Now, when he actually found himself fallen so low as to half-ask if he might smoke in the drawing-room! Not quite, of course; that would have been too absurd! But he said something or other, or Marianne would not have replied as she did.
"As if I ever minded! How can you be so ridiculous!" This was good and lubricative. But she spoilt it by adding that there was the little ash-pan. Nevertheless, by the time the incense from her husband's cigar, and an atmosphere of consolatory coffee, were bringing back the flavour of a thousand and one post-prandial hours of peace in days gone by, the malignant influence of that cabman began to lose its force, and there was concession in the way she added: "I suppose you weren't allowed to smoke in the drawing-room at Boyd's--Royd's--whatever it was?"
"Royd. Cigarettes--yes! Hardly cigars. At least, nobody did it. The young women smoked cigarettes."
"Those sort of people do it now. At least, Charlotte Eldridge says so. I don't know."
"Wish you'd smoke, Polly Anne! Have a cigarette now."
"Oh no!--I've tried often enough to know I don't like it. You must go away to some of your Grosvenor Squares if you're not happy smoking by yourself."
Things were pleasanter. Why couldn't Challis let it alone, instead of at once discerning an opportunity of delivering Judith's message? To say, as he did, "No--I've had enough of the Grosvenor Squares for some time to come," wasn't unblemished truth, but it was an excusable stepping-stone under the circumstances, with poor dear slow Polly Anne waiting for consolation. The mistake was in what followed. Our own belief is he would have done much better to make a forget of that message until his life was running again in a married channel. He began badly for one thing. You should never say "By-the-bye!" in order to introduce the thing uppermost in your mind.
"By-the-bye, Polly Anne, it won't do to forget that the young female Grosvenor Square wants to call on you." To this Marianne made no answer, and her husband had to add: "Miss Arkroyd--Judith!"
It became difficult not to answer. Marianne fidgeted. "I suppose she'll have to come," she said.
"Well!--I suppose so." There was a shade of asperity in this. But what followed softened it. "You know, really, Polly Anne darling, you'll have to put up with the fascinating Judith a little, for the sake of the play. Besides, she sent you such a very nice message."
"Very kind of her!" However, Mrs. Challis has quite her share of human inquisitiveness, and if she wants to hear the message after her sardonic speech, she must make concession. "What was the very nice message?" she asks grudgingly.
Perhaps Challis's powers of fiction made him able to imagine exactly how he would have behaved if Judith Arkroyd had been merely a showy, smart-set sort of a girl--or merely an intelligent young woman, without a figure to speak of--or, still more merely, one of those excruciating well-informed persons of importance phrenologically, but with no figure at all. On this occasion he felt he knew exactly what his conduct would have been had he undertaken an embassage from the merest of these three--the last. And he modelled his conduct accordingly.
"Don't be miffy with the poor woman, Polly Anne," said he. He had thought of "poor girl," but decided on something bonier, with hair brushed on to the shape of the head, and a black dress. This refers, of course, to the provisional lay-figure he elected to give his message from.
"The poor woman!" Marianne repeated, looking rather suspicious over it. But the image of the lay-figure in his mind, telepathically communicated, produced a certain softening, so he thought. He moved from the bent wood rocking-chair he was smoking in to the sofa beside his wife.
"I'll tell you exactly her message word for word," he said. He did so, as from the lay-figure. And, indeed, he almost wished that fiction had been a reality, as far as this message went. He could have sketched out the proposed visit so much more easily, in his inmost mind; which was, to say truth, incredulous about its turning out satisfactory to either lady, their respective personalities being as supplied.
"I suppose she'll have to come," said Marianne drearily. "Why can't she come when other people are here?"
"Because she wants to see you, my dear. She doesn't want to see the other people."
"Why need I be in it at all? Can't you introduce her to Mr. Magnus, and let them settle it between them?" For in his last letter Challis had enlarged on the Aminta Torrington scheme, and his wife was quite au fait of the position so far.
He hummed and hawed, and flushed slightly. The removal of a column of ash from his cigar seemed to absorb him for a moment. "I don't think you quite see all the ins and outs of the situation, Polly Anne. Don't you understand?..."
"Understand what?"
"Well--I'm sure Miss Arkroyd really wishes to know you. You see, I've talked so much about you." This was not really a true truth, for conversation about Marianne had always been at Judith's instigation. "But there are other considerations, apart from that...."
"What considerations?"
"Well, you know, we do live in a world! Don't we now, Polly Anne?"
"I thought it was something of that sort. Charlotte Eldridge said it would be."
"What did Charlotte Eldridge say? I wish she'd keep her tongue to herself...."
"But you're getting angry before you know what she did say."
"No, I'm not! I mean I'm not getting angry at all. Why should I get angry? Come, old girl, be reasonable! What did Charlotte Eldridge say?" Nevertheless, it is clear that Mr. Challis is keeping his temper--keeping it admirably, perhaps, but still, keeping it! His wife's answer shows painfully how well she is keeping hers.
"Charlotte Eldridge said I should be wanted the moment I told her about Aminta Torrington.... No!--it's no use pretending, Tite!... Besides, I'm not hurt. Why should I be? Only I don't see why there need be a make-believe friendship between me and this young lady--and me to have to put on my black silk, and a new Madeira cake--and to give Harmood directions to say not at home! Charlotte Eldridge and I have talked it all over...."
"Oh!--you've talked it all over?" Challis either is, or pretends to be, inclined to laugh.
"Yes, we have. And you know how sensible Charlotte is about things of this sort.... No, Titus, you can try to make what I say ridiculous, and I dare say you'll succeed, but you know what a good friend Charlotte has been to me from the beginning...." Marianne pulls up short suddenly in the middle of her speech, with a suggestion in it of a tear corked in at its source. She gets the cork well in, and ends with: "I won't say any more about it. You shall arrange it just as you like your own way"--but this with the amenability of a traction-engine making concession to its handle.
Challis, who had felt it rather hard that a tearfulness derived from tender memories of Mrs. Eldridge's loyalty in past years should slop over into his department, became awake to the fact that brisk strategy would be needed to prevent that cork coming out. "Come, I say now, Polly Anne!" said he with jovial remonstrance. "Fancy you and me falling out about a Grosvenor Square young lady!" He burst out laughing, roundly. "We have shot up in the world. My word!" He got his arm round an unresponsive invertebrate waist, in spite of a collision with a hook, which rather took the edge off his caress. Why cannot ladies have some sort of little smooth tie, just at that point, in case? It was a very slight blot on the scutcheon, however, and, indeed, would have counted for nothing with Challis had not Marianne offered him her mole to kiss instead of her lips. For she had a mole--a small one, certainly--just on the cheek-bone. Now a liberal, unreserved warmth in this act of the drama would have been invaluable. It would have helped Challis to snap his fingers at whatever it was that was taunting him with having effected for politic purposes a half-derision of Judith as a Grosvenor Squarian--and that, too, after the cordial message to his wife!
However, it was quite impossible to pretend--it would not be fair to say admit--that they were quarrelling, after that. In fact, it was so established an assumption that their old confidence was again on its old footing, that Challis felt it would be ungenerous to Marianne to change the subject for safety's sake. Besides, he wanted an answer to a question.
"You didn't tell me what it was Charlotte did say, Polly Anne.... I dare say she was all right, you know." The use of her Christian name alone was a concession--showed good-will. Speech is full of such niceties.
Marianne got up and broke a coal on the fire. She couldn't think of two things at once, naturally. This made a pause before answering, and a pretence of having omitted an answer because of the slightness of its subject was plausible.
"Oh--Charlotte? It really was the merest talk by the way. She only said it would keep people from talking nonsense."
"What would?"
"If the Grosvenor Square young lady and I were bosom friends. She was joking, you know."
"I see what she meant," said Challis; and seemed to, reflectively. But really he was crossing Mrs. Eldridge out of one or two passages in his good books where her name still occurred. Confound her! Couldn't she leave it to him to instruct Marianne--who was much too slow to find out anything for herself--on this point? However, it was best to confirm her, on the whole. He continued: "Of course, if it were thought that you and she were at daggers drawn, spiteful people would say things. They always do if they get a chance. But what I look at is that she is Aminta Torrington. It's quite miraculous. You never saw anything so happy." He quite forgot that lay-figure.
Marianne waived discussion of the dramatic aspect of the question. She knew nothing about these things--was an outsider. But she seemed to register concession on the main point. She supposed the young woman must come, and she could tell Charlotte and Maria Macculloch and Lewis Smithson to be sure not to call that day, and then Harmood could say "not at home." Better make it Thursday, and get it over.
"Didn't Charlotte say anything else?" This was chiefly conciliation on Challis's part. He did not wish to seem in a hurry to get away from Mrs. Eldridge, or to resent her discussion of his affairs.
"Oh--she talked, of course! You mean when I saw her yesterday? Only she was still so anxious about John."
"He'll be all right, won't he? Did you say peritonitis? Are you sure? Because peritonitis is the dooce's own delight."
"The doctor says there is no occasion for the slightest uneasiness." Whereupon Challis settled in his own mind that John Eldridge would be spared to his wife and relatives, for the present at any rate. Peritonitis inside a week, and no need for uneasiness at the end of it! He allowed the medical report to lapse, and referred again to what Charlotte had said. It certainly seemed, to judge by Marianne's reply, "I thought she was quite mistaken, you know," that Charlotte had "talked, of course," although she was so uneasy about John.
"What about?" But he didn't want to seem to catechize, so he discovered that his cigar--which he was quite half through--didn't draw well, and lit another. Then he was able to say, "Let's see!--what were we talking about? What Charlotte said." He resumed his place beside his wife, too manifestly to receive the answer for her to withhold it.
"It was only general conversation, about what Miss Arkroyd's family--with all their ideas--would think of her going on the stage."
"My dear! I must say I do wish you hadn't mentioned Miss Arkroyd to her at all. I hope you made her understand she must be quiet about it?"
"Oh, she won't mention it--except perhaps to John." Challis looked alarmed. However, John couldn't talk much at present, even if peritonitis only meant obstruction. "Besides, I didn't really tell her anything. It was an accident. I showed her something else in your letter a week ago, and by the merest chance she read it by mistake. It wasn't her fault."
"Nor yours. I see! But what did she read?"
"Only where you said you would have to talk to the old boy about his daughter's stage-mania ... nothing that could possibly do any harm."
Now, Challis's conscience had been uneasy about the part he was going to play in helping Judith towards a secret arrangement which was sure to outrage the feelings of her family. So, when he said "Oh!" to this, he had to jump abruptly on to make it seem a casual, ordinary "Oh!" He succeeded pretty well. "What was Charlotte's idea?" said he.
"The same idea, of course. As long as Sir Thingummy knew all about it, no one could possibly blame you."
"I don't know that it's really my concern. I don't know that it's any of our...." A pause here is due to his duty to syntax.... "I mean to say--that it is the business of any one of us. Miss Arkroyd is no chicken. In fact, I'm not sure that her age won't stand in her way--for training, I mean. However, of course I shall take care that her family knows all about it." Challis's voice sounded well in his own ears, and he was convinced that no fault could be found with his behaviour so far. As to anyone saying he should not have made the promise about Mr. Magnus of the Megatherium while he was a trusted guest at Royd, that was sheer nonsense. He felt quite nettled with Marianne for saying, "Oh, haven't you done it?" But he wasn't going to prolong discussion about it.
He felt nettled, too, with himself for feeling, when Marianne left him to read, before going to bed, the letters that had come for him--with a charge to him not to make a noise when he came up--nettled for feeling that he had got through the evening well, which was absurd; and that to do so he had assumed a certain roughness in reference to Judith, to accentuate his equable indifference to her personally, which was absurder. What was it all about?--was the question he asked himself. And then another that arose from it naturally, What was what all about? The distraction afforded by a handful of miscellaneous correspondence gave him an excuse for ignoring the latter question, which, indeed, seemed to him the more unanswerable of the two.
One thing, however, he was glad of having achieved. Marianne would write that letter, he felt sure. Only he would just keep his eye on her to see that she did it. He would not have to write to Judith, "Please don't come and see my wife!" in any form, transparent or otherwise.
For anything the story shows at this point, Alfred Challis and Marianne might have tided over any little difficulties arising out of the visit to Royd, if they had only been judiciously let alone. It was those blessed Peacemakers!
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
Lizarann Coupland used to wonder how ever Daddy could go out in the cold and stop all day. It was noble of him to do so in the public service--that was how Lizarann thought of it. For she believed the insinuations embodied in song by "the boys" in Tallack Street to be malicious falsehoods, and as for "the boy" whose aunt sold fried eels and winkles next door to the shop where her father purchased his shaving-soap, she only hoped that a good basting her own aunt wished to give to the whole clanjamfray of 'em--meaning boys generally--might be concentrated on the unsheltered person of this particular boy. She had improved her acquaintance with him, and had come to the conclusion that for presumption and self-conceit, for ill manners and very doubtful good feeling, that boy was without a parallel.
During the whole of this acquaintance it had never occurred to Lizarann to ask this boy's name. And but yesterday she had committed the tactical error of surrendering her own christened name in exchange for peppermint drops. The moment of the present writing is a deadly afternoon in January, gettin' on for four, but that dark you'll have to light the gas in the end, and may just as well do it at once. The place is the one spoken of in an earlier chapter as Vatted Rum Corner, and that boy is a settin' on the rilin' eatin' of four 'ot chestnuts off of Mrs. Groves's bikin' trye, for a 'ape'ny, and to be allowed to warm your fingers at the grite. He had had to make room for other customers.
Lizarann came up cold, and envied the feast. The boy was a self-indulgent boy, or seemed so. For he only said, "These four's for me, bought and paid for, square. You git some for yourself, orf of Mother Groves. Two for a farden's your figger, Aloyzer." And then he sketched a clog-dance on the hard-trodden snow of the pavement, with a mouth quite full of chestnuts.
Lizarann felt the heartlessness of his attitude. Yesterday he had cajoled her into an admission that her name was Lizarann by offering peppermint drops. Now he had nothing to gain by an offer of chestnuts, and kept them all himself! She happened to be in funds, and could have purchased four for a 'ape'ny, and in that case would as like as not have given that boy one, as an exemplar towards generosity. But at the moment a higher interest claimed her attention. He knew her name, and she didn't know his. An iniquity, clearly! How could she remedy it?
Now Lizarann had contrived, childwise, a curious idea about her name. It may have originated in a chant she herself had joined in frequently, merely for the sake of the music:
"Oh fie--fie for shame! Everybody knows your name."
But it certainly had acquired its full force from an expression made use of by her Aunt Stingy, who had spoken of a young person as having "lost her good name." What the young person was called by her friends, afterwards, was a problem Lizarann had given a good deal of thought to. And she was now unable to dissociate the young person's position altogether from her own. If her name had not been lost as a necessary implement of social intercourse with the world at large, it at least had been surrendered with no per contra, in the case of an immoral and worthless member of it. But she felt that, could she become possessed of his name, as a set-off, the balance of righteousness would be adjusted. And she was much more anxious about this than about the chestnuts.
"What's your nime?" said she, after self-commune which suggested no less trenchant way of approaching the subject.
The boy paused in the clog-dance. "Moses," said he. And then went on as before.
"Nuffint elst no more than Moses?"
"That's tellin's." The boy said this absently, and did some more steps. Then he simulated a graceful subsidence of the dance, ending in an attitude that seemed to acknowledge the applause of a delighted throng. But a commercial possibility had presented itself. "What'll you stand," said he, "for to be told my name, and no lies?" This seemed mercenary; but then, had not Lizarann herself surrendered hers for a deal? Why condemn him?
No!--Lizarann lived in a glass house, and wouldn't throw stones. But she would make conditions. "Real nime all froo," she said. "Moses is lyin' stories!" For, you see, this was a crafty boy, and might consider the concession of a true surname alone would discharge his obligations under the contract.
"Then on'y Moses," said he; and began an encore--presumably, as it was the same dance. But he was not too preoccupied by it to take off the shell of his fourth chestnut, and when he had done so he smelt it, with disappointment. For it was mouldy. An idea struck him, and he acted on it.
"Marcy me, no!" said Mother Groves of the chestnuts when requested by him to 'and over a good un, fair and no cheating. "The riskis lies with the buyers. Where 'ud I be, in half the time, at that rate?"
"Then I'll 'ave the law of yer. Just see if I don't." He danced again, and this time his dance seemed to express confidence in his solicitor. But presently he stopped, and offered a composition: "You lookee here, Missis Groves," he said. "I'll 'and you back the mouldy one, onbit-into and closin' over the busted shell, acrost a clean new un, and I'll take another highp'orth off you, and pay square. If that ain't fair, nothin' ain't! But you got to look sharp, or the chance'll be gone."
Mother Groves rejected the chance. "It ain't consideration enough to go again' the rules on, and me to take my 'ands out in the perishing cold. Make it a penn'orth and pick yourself, all exceptin' the three top."
"Hin't got no penny! Feel in my porket and see. It's open to yer to feel. There hin't no horbstickle. Here's a highp'ny and the bloomin' nut, shell and all. Mike your mind up!"
But Mrs. Groves's mind was made up, apparently. The boy then suggested that his motives had been the prosperity of trade, throughout; he was, in fact, or said he was, full up till dinner-time. So he must have been dining late, recently.
At this point Lizarann made a proposal. She, too, had a halfpenny, and was ready to pool this halfpenny with the boy's, and give him sole enjoyment of the extra chestnut, but only on one condition. He must tell his name, and no lies.
Mrs. Groves brought her hands out in the perishing cold--pathetic old hands, a young girl's once--and made two even groups of four nuts each. Then, leave being giv', the boy chose the compensation nut; only he took his time like a young 'Eathen as he was. Then Mrs. Groves, as assessor and umpire, required his name as a preliminary to final liquidation.
"'Orkins. Frederick. Frederick 'Orkins. Could have told yer it wasn't Moses any day of the week! 'And over!" And thereon he and Lizarann each had four bloomin' nuts, so 'ot you couldn't 'ardly 'andle 'em.
"I shall keep mine for my daddy, and keep 'em 'ot too," said Lizarann. She placed them nearest her heart, and felt that it was good to do so. They was a'most too 'ot, in the manner of speaking; but then a small undergarment protected her, when discreetly scroozled up fluffy.
"You best 'ide 'em well up," said Frederick Hawkins. "Here's a coarper comin' along. Don't you let 'em make no show, or he'll get his 'and on 'em."
But he only said this to perplex and annoy, and create unnecessary panic; and Lizarann knew that, every bit as well as we do. So she merely said: "Jimmy 'Acker can foight you," and enjoyed the warmth fearlessly. Her daddy's stick was not audible yet, coming along by the wall. He was late to-day. Lizarann's orders were to wait at the corner till she heard it, and then call "Pilot," that he might know she was waiting for him, and be happy. For he always had pangs of doubt that he might not meet her this time. Think of that little thing--for he knew how small she was still, by the feel, though there was no one to tell him what she was like to look at--think of her coming along that crowded street alone, to meet her daddy! She for her part had no misgivings about his coming. "Never you fear for me, lassie," he had said. And he knew, Law bless you!
"I'll Jimmy 'Acker 'im!" said Frederick Hawkins boastfully. "I could 'tend on two like 'im at wunst. How old do you make him?" Which showed the vaingloriousness of his character, for clearly he knew nothing about Jimmy Hacker.
Lizarann couldn't commit herself to the age of the latter. But she could to his bulk and prowess. "He's thicker than you," she said, and added, with recollection of a combatant defeated by Jimmy Hacker: "He can foight a boy twelve next birthday."
"Then he ain't any so much to count on. I don't go by ages. Weights is what I go by. Any number o' stun I can foight, up to eight stun seven. You tell 'im to keep indoors, or I'll fetch him somethin' for to rek'lect me by. You see!"
But Mother Groves interposed to rebuke and check this inflated and defiant spirit. "Don't you pay no attention to that boy, my dear," said she to Lizarann. "He's that full of lip there's no placin' no reliance on a word he says. If I was his mother I should know just where he wanted a good canin'. Ah!--and he'd get it too, night or mornin'. A young cock-sparrer I call him, and if he don't come by a bad end it'll be a moral. Ah!--wait till I find out where your mother lives, and see." Mrs. Groves worked rising indignation into her speech, after the manner of her class. Even so the Choctaw or Cherokee stimulates himself to battle-point. But Frederick Hawkins remained unmoved. He knew the old woman couldn't ketch holt upon him. He became most offensive, assuming a nasal drone with an approach to a chant.
"I got a widdered mother. She keeps a fish-shop. And I ain't a-goin', neither, for to tell you where." He threw a reminiscence of his previous dance into this.
Now Lizarann knew perfectly well that the fish-shop was next door to where her daddy bought his shaving-soap. But she wasn't going to tell. No nice little boy or girl ever tells. The particulars kept back on principle may relate to young cock-sparrows on whom no reliance can be placed, or to mere heathens--as in the present instance--but as for acquaintin' their parents, guardians, or other responsible grown-up persons, what they done, or anything likely to lead to conviction--who ever heard of such a thing? Even the London servant class retains this one trace of an honourable usage. It won't tell.
Mother Groves merely referred to the ease of discovering fish-shops; especially when localized, as this one practically was, by the constant presence round her corner of a heathen residing there. She then gave all her attention to the conservation of vital heat; and it was needed, for her poor old clothes were thin on her poor old body. It wasn't 'ardly a reg'lar bad day, not to call it so, but it was a frost that was going to give a lift to the plumbin' trade, and do a rare lot of good that way. For the only good that can come now to this world is evidently through the destruction of something it has worked at the making of in years past, in order that people who have little may have to pay people who have less to do a bit of repairs to it, so that it won't want no lookin' to again, not yet awhile.
Can we wonder?--we who have read, for instance, of the revived prosperity of ship-building, shown by the putting down on the stocks of several new ... destroyers? But never mind this!--pardon it and get back to the story and the degrees of frost at Vatted Rum Corner.
It wasn't so bad then, not when once you was out in it; it had been a tidy sight worse two days ago, afore it froze so hard underfoot; why--the busses couldn't keep goin', and a 'orse fell down so soon as ever you got him on his feet! And as for cabs, they wouldn't set foot outside of the yard, because where was the use? You couldn't stiddy yourself on your feet, not unless there was cenders on the track, or thored with boiling water.
Lizarann bore it bravely, in spite of chilblains and a blue complexion. Frederick Hawkins was blue; but either his heathenism or some other attribute enabled him to bear the cold defiantly. "It ain't freezin' here," said he, denying the obvious. "Hicey cold it was Bart'sey Park Sunday. The hice makes it cold 'acos of the skatin'." And Lizarann accepted this view of cause and effect. She might have disputed it had she not been beginning to feel uneasy about her daddy.
"Why, child, don't ye go along to'ards meetin' him? He'll be comin', I lay." Thus Mother Groves. And the boy added: "Why don't yer 'ook it along down to the Rilewye, to see for yourself? You 'ook it! 'Ook it orf! I'm tellin' of yer." But Lizarann only stood on her two feet alternately, and hugged the dying heat of the chestnuts. They wouldn't be no good for daddy. Alas!
"I was tolded not to do it," said she. "Yass!"
Mrs. Groves approved. "Quite right, my dear, not to disobey your parents. But your daddy he'll come, you'll see."
But Frederick Hawkins had another code of morals. "I'd disobey my parents if I had any to speak on. If I'd a dozen on 'em, I'd disobey the bilin'." Mrs. Groves pointed out that by doing this Frederick would be brought into collision with his Creator, and dwelt on the impolicy of such an action. But he continued obdurate.
"I'd disobey the kit on 'em. You'd see, if you kep' your eye open." Then, addressing Lizarann, he added: "You give me a chestnut, and I'll disobey your parents for yer. You jist try! See if I don't!" Then, when Lizarann timidly produced the chestnut, in great doubt of whether her action was justifiable, he added: "See if I ain't back again afore yer know where y' are," and, after a slight preliminary quick-step or double-shuffle, fled away into the growing dusk.
"You keep your sperrits up, child," said Mother Groves. And, as is usual when one hears that one's spirits want keeping up, Lizarann's went down. But she felt the old lady's goodwill, and went and stood close up to her, taking care to choose the side away from the roasting-box, lest she should seem simply seeking warmth. However, she was soon invited round to the other side. The warmth made her communicative.
"My daddy he's been to sea," she said. "Only in real ships, and come home again. The Flying Dutchman she never come home." This did not explain itself to Mrs. Groves. She drew a false inference.
"She went to the bottom, I lay. And all aboard of her belike. Lord be good to us!"
Lizarann shook her head. "Not the Dutchman. She's afloat, every spar on her,"--she religiously gave Jim's exact words, with a sense of saying a lesson--"and to stop afloat till the Lord comes to judge sinners from repentance." She got a little confused here, but it sounded good, and her hearer was impressed.
"Now only 'ark at that!" said she. "I'd 'a said you was a God-fearin' child. And you may never need doubt but it's all true, my dear!" Mrs. Groves, perhaps, was prepared to ascribe truth to any narrative that had a religious phrase or two in it; still, she was probably impressed with the little person's manner, for she referred to Frederick Hawkins, in contrast. "Now, that young Turk, he's no respect, and won't come to no good end, I lay."
But Lizarann didn't want the conversation coaxed away from the Flying Dutchman. "Daddy seen her, himself," she said fervently; and then, resuming the lesson-manner: "Every stitch o' sail on her set in a three-quarter gale freshenin' from the south. And the look-out forward, he seen her too. And Job Collins, he seen her. And Marmaduke Flyn, he seen her. And Peter Cortright, he seen her." All these were essential items of the often-told tale.
Mother Groves's hearing was none of the best; so when she condemned the time-honoured legend as outlandish and French, it may be she had really supposed that some of the expressions were in a foreign tongue, any variety of which she would naturally consider French, failing instruction to the contrary. But Lizarann's reference to the Lord, to sinners, and to repentance, was strong enough in itself to keep suspicions of Voltaire and Tom Paine in abeyance. Mrs. Groves therefore allowed the story to continue, and felt fortified against the heresies abounding on the Continent by the approved religious bias of the narrator.
"Peter Cortright and Marmaduke Flyn they was both on the mainyard reefin', alongside o' my daddy, and Job Collins he was aft by the binnacle. Then Peter Cortright he sings out to my daddy to look; and my daddy he looked and seen her, carryin' all sail afore the wind. And then, no more time than what you says budget in, she was agone away, out o' sight." A pause came here, for dramatic impressiveness. Then followed, for reinforcement of testimony: "But Job Collins, he seen her, too, plain!"
Mrs. Groves only said, "My sakes, now!--to think of that." But rather as a courtesy to the narrator. She would no doubt have followed her meaning better if thawed indoors before a nice warm fire. She certainly could not, or did not, admit to her mind a comparison that surely hung on the outskirts of the tale--a parallel between that moment on the great sea, and now! To think of it all! Of the three reefers out on the yard, struggling with the mighty wind; of the rising seas whose crested foam it blew to spray; of its voice as it whistled through the drenched cordage, and made a whisper of the sailor's shout to his mate, that spoke of the ship he saw out yonder--the ship that, whatever she really was, was to become the Flying Dutchman in the memories of all the three! And then to think of what that child--that almost baby girl--told about her as she nestled, welcome enough, to the side of the old soul that had spent her last decade selling, in the London Streets, the chestnuts that had ripened in the southern sun, above the slopes the vines grew on. To think of the sordid and darkened lives, closed round in the intolerable hive of their own contriving, so stunted and suborned to a spurious contentment as never to long for an escape; so strange to the meaning of the word "rejoicing" as to find a version of it in the filth-house at the corner; whose swing-door, to say the truth, the little maid looks rather enviously at as it opens and closes, letting out the vapid bawlings from the human fools within into the silence of the streets, and suggesting jolly bad ale and new to the cold and empty passer-by! To think of the millions near at hand, all sunless beneath the great black pall that has for weeks past shrouded their visible world, but has left them unchoked as yet and confident, and even a little boastful--Heaven knows why!--of some strange indefinite advantages carbon and sulphur confer on those who can breathe them and live.
No two items of the parallels could be more unlike, surely, than the reefers out on the yard in the great sea wind, and such chance wayfarers as are to be seen now--few enough, for all who can keep indoors prefer to do so--making the best of their slippery way home, let us hope, to the native joint and vegetables and rice-pudding. Certainly--so one would have said--none more unlike than those of this approaching crowd, close on the heels of three policemen in charge of a wheeled ambulance, hand-driven, working slowly along the least slippery part of the road. And most unlike of all, surely, the human burden, sot or reprobate perhaps, that the closed curtain of the ambulance hides from us. But he would have been wrong who said so. For it was Jim himself that was inside that ambulance, and he ought by rights to have come along that road on his feet.
"You lie still, my good feller. The doctor he'll see to you." The policeman who says this to the interior of the ambulance says it as one to whom any form of poll-parrotting--that is to say, human speech--is distasteful. He slaps his gloves for warmth, as he walks beside the ambulance. He is a reserve man, who has come out in charge of it. But a moment after he listens again; there may be exceptions, after all, to a rule of universal glum silence! What is this ambulance case saying?
"It ain't for myself, master. It's for my little lass. She comes for to fetch me home to the Green Man ... house at the corner ... very nigh to us now, as I take it...." Jim's voice is bad, and he is speaking against pain, gallantly. A subordinate constable says, "That's so, too!" and this confirmation reinforces Jim, who goes on, recognizing the voice: "Your mate, he knows her. You'll tell her, master. I'll trust ye for a good man ... there's only a little bit of harm done ... say I've had worse happen many a time afore...." But Jim is at the end of his tether. His voice goes faint. His instruction was clear, though.
"See for the child, Clancy," says the first officer. "And tell 'em at the bar to send out a small brandy." Clancy goes on ahead. He is a person incapable of feeling surprise, so when he meets a potboy approaching with a glass of brandy, he makes no useless inquiries, but merely points backward towards the approaching ambulance.
The potboy carries the brandy on, and the officer gets it down Jim's throat somehow. "Very smart of you, Thomas," says he, inventing a name for the potboy, a complete stranger to him. "Nothin' like being beforehand!"
But Thomas disclaims any credit for himself. His action was, he affirms, due to instructions transmitted to him by a young customer. His report is: "He cuts in and he says, says he, p'leece accident, he says. Pickford's waggon gone over a bloke, he says. You cut along out with a nip o' brandy for a stimilant, he says. That's what the orficer says, he says. And off he goes!" As the brandy is consumed, it clearly will be a good contribution to taciturnity to say nothing about it. Moreover, the potboy, miscalled Thomas, conveys that his governor, at the Man, is not a blooming screw; and that the brandy ain't worth going to law about. The officer suggests, however, that a second nip would not be unwelcome to himself, and would bring the total up to the point of being chargeable to the Force.
There is time for all this, as a case of this sort must be carried gently, apart from the fact that the slippery road makes caution necessary. And by the time the ambulance reaches the corner Lizarann is sticking to loyally, mindful to the last of her promise never to go beyond where it was wrote up "Old Vatted Rum," her first tendency to break into panic-stricken sobs, on hearing that her daddy has had an accident, is already well under control; the policeman Clancy, whom she knows by sight, and has even spoken with, and who therefore is trustworthy, having told her that her daddy will soon come round, and never be a penny the worse.
"Now you're going to be a good little girl, ain't you, and not make a shine?" Thus the policeman, on vernacular lines, supposed to be soothing to the excitable. And Mother Groves, partly in deference to a uniform, adds: "You do like the gentleman tells you, my dear, and go along where he says!" This suggests to Clancy, who had at first intended to limit himself to negative injunctions, to say: "Yes, you run along home, little miss, and tell 'em your daddy's being took proper care of."
But the terrified scrap, blue with the cold, half-choked with the hysterical gasps she is fighting against so bravely, as bidden, sees a deadlier possibility still before her in her arrival at home without her daddy. It was the dread of having to tell, more than the fear of being accounted the responsible culprit, that kept her glued to the spot. She was docility itself towards constituted authorities of all sorts, but now her feet simply would not move. Oh, what a huge relief it was when the other policeman, him along of the hospital-barrer, said: "Ketch that kid, some of you, and bring her along this way! Can't wait here all day!" He slammed his hands one across the other very hard, not only to procure circulation, but to express promptitude.
The kid didn't want any bringing. She was across the road and beside the ambulance before the instruction to catch her could be obeyed. "You'll do your daddy more harm than good, that way!" said the hand-slapper, stopping short. Lizarann's first instinct, to scramble up the hospital-barrer--to get at her daddy on any terms--had to be combated on his behalf. "Peck the child up, and 'old her acrost the edge," suggests the potboy from "The Man." The constable remarks, "Some o' the public'll be feeling dry by now, and nobody to serve 'em! You best carry that empty glass back, Thomas." But he accepts Thomas's suggestion, and Lizarann is grateful to the strong hands that pick her up to kiss her daddy's face. Was it really his?--she thinks to herself, as they put her down again out of her father's sight, below the couch-rim of the ambulance. She can't speak; he can.
"Ye never cried 'Pi-lot' little lass." How hard he tried to make his voice cheerful, and how well he succeeded, too!--mere mass of breathless pain that he was. The least word a man can speak over whom a waggon has passed, crushing both legs, will show the constitution of a giant behind it, even if it is followed perforce by a groan; and Jim suppressed even that. Were not those his little lass's lips that had just touched his cheek? She, poor child, could only say "Daddy!" or mix it with a sob. Which of the two Jim heard, who can say? But just at that moment the nip of brandy began to tell, and Jim was able to make a great effort. "Never you fret, little lass," he said. "The ship's doctor, he'll make a square job of my leg. You run away home and say I'm took proper care of." What Lizarann's daddy said was to be done was the thing to do, past doubt, and nothing else could be right. Lizarann started straight for home.
Poor Jim!--he knew what he was and where he was well enough. But he couldn't find his words right. So he talked of the ship's doctor, knowing all the while that the surgeon of the Z division was going to attend to his leg. As to the extent of his hurt and how it came about, he knew almost as little as the story does, so far. All he was sure of was that he lost his bearings after leaving his precious board at the barber's shop, was shouted at to stand clear, didn't stand clear, and was overwhelmed by what he should have stood clear of, and knocked silly. Beyond that, the little that had reached him, since he recovered consciousness, related so much to the prophetic certainty of its speakers that what had happened had been sure to happen, and they could have foreseen it any day, that it made him little the wiser. And what the crash had left of his faculties was too actively employed about his child to feel curious about the details of the accident.
* * * * *
Lizarann's first information about it, as she completed the legend of the Flying Dutchman to Mother Groves, was from the boy Hawkins, who came running to report the disaster, just as she was standing cross-examination on her first deposition. Instead of coming straight, he just in at one door of the ale 'us, and out at the other, like you might have said, only half a minute between! He then come crassin' over--this was Mrs. Groves's experience--and queer he looked, causing Lizarann to ask, "Ain't my daddy there?" in alarm. To which his reply was alarming and ambiguous: "Oh ah!--he's there all right enough--wot there is of him." He did not improve this by beginning, in a throat-clearing, gasping way, like a boy whose speech has lost its orientation, "I say, Missis...." Whereat Lizarann, in growing terror, broke into hysterical sobs, and would have started in her despair along the forbidden way, if the sad procession with the ambulance had not appeared, and chilled her to the marrow. She could hear the boy, greatly relieved by the appearance of direct evidence of what had happened, saying that there was nothing to make a hollerin' about; it was only a haccident, and wot could you expect, a day like this? His anxiety to minimize the evil did credit to a human heart that seemed, in spite of appearances to the contrary, to underlie his Asiatic nature. He was even attempting further exhortation towards fortitude when the policeman came up, and he vanished.
In a very few minutes all were gone but Mother Groves and the chestnut stove, in the yellow gloom of the growing fog, waiting for the grandson of the former to come and see to the gettin' of 'em both home. As the old woman looked back on the event, it presented itself to her as an accident, and the accident had been took to the Hospital. That was all. On'y, that poor little thing! But Mrs. Groves soon forgot her, and was back on a great problem of her life--would the stove last out her time, with a bit of patching now and again? It had been that patched already, and was near falling to pieces. And when her grandson come, late, she'd a'most forgotten the accident. There now, she declared if she hadn't!
* * * * *
Lizarann pattered on as hard as she could go, so many steps to a sob, until she got to Dartley Street, and then she heard, behind her, the boy Frederick Hawkins, out of breath. "You ain't any call for to watercart, young un," said he. His manner was superior and offensive, but Lizarann felt that benevolent intention combined in it with masculine dignity. Still, protest was called for.
"I hin't a-cryin'!" she said. "On'y my d-daddy--he's t-took to the Hospital!" It was too dreadful, put into words, and Lizarann broke down over it.
"Who do yer call the worse by that? He ain't, not he!" This boy means well. His better nature is roused, but he has no mode of speech that is not truculent or threatening. He softens a little, though, as he becomes communicative: "Why, I had two uncles and a aunt, flat they was, under a street-roller! And they just off with 'em to the Horspital, and, my eyes and witals!--you should a' seen 'em no better than a fortnit after! Singin' they wos!"
Lizarann disbelieved this story, but not because of the main incident. It was the singing that stuck in the gizzard of her credulity. Uncles and aunts never sang. They might be raised from the dead; may not Lazarus have had a niece? But singing!--no! She merely summarized her views, not arguing the point: "They never sang nuffint."
A proud spirit brooks no contradiction. "Ain't I tellin' of yer?" said the Turk indignantly. He adduced corroborative evidence. "Why!--warn't a boy-makes-his-livin'-by-daily-journals-I-knows's father's corpse h'isted up out of a shore and took to the Horspital stone-dead with the un'olesome atmosphere and fetched to? And dined off of nourishin' food the same evening, and rezoomed work on the Monday?" Meeting no expression of doubt of this case, he adduced another, more calmly. "Likewise Tom Scott, as 'arf killed Parker for five pounds a side, he picked up six of his teeth he'd knocked out, he did; and he run after him to the Horspital, he did; and they stuck 'em in again for Mr. Parker, they did, as good as new. They can do most anythin'." So it appeared. And the cases gained greatly in credibility by the Turk's obviously true recitation of maturer ideas than his own in the language of seniors. It was like Lizarann's own tale of the Flying Dutchman; and she felt it so, and found solace accordingly. She hoped the Turk would go all the way with her, to give moral support, and repeat his experience. You see, this Turk was, to her vision, big, authoritative, and mature. He did not present himself to her as an impident young sprat, in want of local smacking. Which no doubt would have been Mrs. Steptoe's view of him had he come all the way. But he forsook Lizarann at the top of Tallack Street, leaving her grateful to him, all the more for his narration of how he heard the blooming copper say a nip o' brandy wouldn't be amiss as a stimilant, and he told 'em at the Green Man. He added that he expected to be proarsecuted for telling of 'em--recalling a little the saying of the third Napoleon, that the Human Race always crucifies its Messiahs.
So there stands Lizarann trembling on the doorstep, after jumping up to the knocker to strike it back and leave it to execute a single knock by itself, and watching the great white flakes of snow that are beginning to fall at their leisure--no hurry--plenty of time yet for three inches deep of them and their mates before the milk comes in the morning!
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!
Lizarann could not shut her eyes to the difference between Aunt Stingy, as she anticipated her on the doorstep, and the Police Force, according to her last impression of it. Her aunt's was not a bosom she could fly to for solace in her trouble--well! no more was that of the Force, if you insist on literalness up to the hilt; but metaphorically she would far sooner have had recourse to the latter than the former. She did not, however, expect penalties this time if she could get in her explanation; but she had doubts whether the shortness of her aunt's temper would allow of its development at sufficient length to be understood.
She tried to think of some quick thing to say that would at once reveal her daddy's mishap and the cause of her return without him. But she should have done it before that sepulchral single knock had shown the executive power of the knocker, and brought out by contrast the footless, hoofless, wheelless silence of Tallack Street. Now that its summons to open had been delivered, the poor little shivering author of it could think of nothing at all. She might have done so, though, as far as time went, for she had to repeat her knock after a pause her terror made to seem short; while to her eagerness for any human voice--even Uncle Bob's--it seemed awfully long. But, as it turned out, the best she could have thought of would have been of little use.
The second knock brought about a shuffling in the house that fluctuated a moment, threatened to subside as it had begun, then seemed to decide on action, and approached the door--but heavily, being palpably Uncle Bob, whose mission seemed to be considered complete by the household when he had stood the door on the jar, and left it, without waiting to see who had knocked. Of course, it could only have been Jim and the child. So it looked as if Mr. Steptoe had decided that his duty was discharged by removing obstacles to their entry, and leaving them to close the door their own way. He'd stood the candle down and just left it to gutter in the passage, when Lizarann got inside of the house. There was something gone wrong there, too, evidently.
As her uncle was in the habit of using the adjectives popular in his class rather freely, Lizarann was not surprised when, supposing himself to be addressing her father, and asking him to "shet to that door and keep the cold out of the house," he prefixed one open to many objections to each of his three substantives. But she was surprised at the tone of his voice, which chattered in gusts, as though control over it went and came, and at the way he was crouching over the fire. He had spoken to her father as Jim, and evidently was taking him for granted--had grasped no facts.
"Please, where's Aunt Stingy?" The child could think of no better thing to say. Something was altogether too wrong with her uncle. She could see he was shaking. All things were all wrong clearly, and the world a nightmare!
"In her bed, mayhap!--shamming ill, I take it." Then he raised his voice, but never looked round: "Jim!--why can't you shut up that da-da-damned d-d-door and come inside?" He had a fair convulsion over those words, more like the chattering fit that sometimes comes before a bad attack of sea-sickness than the effects of ordinary cold. Many may not know this sort.
"Father ain't here," was all Lizarann could say.
"Then shet to the damned door till he comes." He could say this and never look round, or notice the sob-broken voice, all a-strain with its terrors, of the little speaker. If he had only cursed her for crying, it would have sounded sane by comparison. Lizarann wished herself back in the street, with the Turk. And how happy those few minutes seemed now, when she did not know about daddy, and was telling Mother Groves about the Flying Dutchman!
She could only stand speechless and utterly terrified at the oddity of her uncle's manner--she well knew his ordinary one, of being in the liquor he was never out of--and was just on the point of mere mad screaming or starting to run God knows where, when the voice of Aunt Stingy came from her bedroom above, also with alarm in it. "Jim, can't you hear, you fool? Leave him to himself, I tell you. He's had the horrors." Aunt Stingy seemed to imply that the horrors, whatever they were, would subside of themselves.
Ill has a fixed point in the minds of young children--a simple maximum it reaches and never goes beyond. Lucky for them that it is so! For a step further would kill. Lizarann's mind could be dragged no farther along the road of terrors that leads maturer lives to self-slaughter or the madhouse. Or it may be some pitying angel wrapped her small soul in a merciful stupefaction, that it might live. For when her aunt's voice came again, peevish and impatient, but without sense of any very abnormal conditions, she was able to answer, "Yass, Aunt Stingy," but not very audibly.
"Why can't you answer when I speak? I tell you, let him bide. He's best to himself, and he's had all what liquor there was.... Can't you answer?... Fetchin' me down!..."
The child understood her aunt's context, for all its elisions. To propitiate, she ran upstairs. A descent in wrath, portended by an exaggerated foot-tramp, was averted by her words: "D-daddy ain't come b-back--he ain't!"
"Why couldn't you speak?--little hussy! You're a child to have in a house. When's he coming?"
"He ain't coming! Yass--he ain't! He's took to the doctor on a barrer. Yass--he is!" And Lizarann, whose small hands, cold and blue, are all tremor and visible unrest from panic, would like to run, but dares not. She has worded her awful message, though. That is something, however much Aunt Stingy may doubt its truth.
"Who's to know you ain't lying? Who's to know he ain't in at the Robin Hood? Now, if you're story-tellin'...!" A bony warning finger should have been enough without any further details of the penalties of falsehood. A reference to a flagellum that had once been inherent in a discarded pair of the speaker's stays--an incredible wooden lathe--ought to have been quite superfluous. But Mrs. Steptoe had had great trials, to excuse her short temper.
However, nothing can alter the facts; and Lizarann can only repeat her statement. Daddy had been took away on the p'leece barrer, with curtings; and his leg was hurt. But the doctor was at the Horspital. This was felt, and offered, as a palliative. Surely it deserved better recognition than, "And why couldn't the child tell me all this before? Keeping me standin' here!" very wrathfully fired off at poor Lizarann. She had told it, and at the earliest possible moment. What could she do more?
Aunt Stingy's reception of the story, which was less émotionné than Lizarann had expected, had its good side. Perhaps the presumptuous boy's description of the powers of Hospitals was not all fanciful, and her aunt's wider experience knew that in a short time daddy would be back home again; not only well and sound, but even better and sounder. Lizarann extracted consolation from her aunt's half callous hearing of her news, without closely analyzing it. Probably Mrs. Steptoe would have been more sympathetic if her own cup of bitterness, like her small niece's, had not been full to the brim already. But sympathy would have intensified Lizarann's solicitude about her father; the fact that the news could be apathetically received by anyone, even Aunt Stingy, fortified her. It may even be that she was braced by her own keen feeling of the injustice her aunt did her in apparently ascribing her father's disaster to her, when really she was only the innocent and most unwilling bearer of the news of it. That, however, was Mrs. Steptoe's attitude. "There's a many'd 'a said you didn't deserve no supper," said she, and claimed a weak good-nature as a quality of her own. She hustled Lizarann into her father's bedroom, with needless collateral pushes in wrong directions, and the admonition, "Don't let me catch you in the parlour, or you'll know of it. Starin' round!" Her truculence, no doubt, had something of a safety-valve character, and she may have thought that the youth of its object would remain ignorant of its full stress, while she herself had the whole advantage of the relief it gave. But really the child understood more than she ascribed to her, and felt its injustice, tempered by the broad consideration that it was only Aunt Stingy.
Mere ferocity towards children is bad enough, but it is hardest to bear when it is illogical. Aunt Stingy was inconsecutive in her grounds of indictment against Lizarann, and this added to the sting of her injustice. No child would have been readier than she to see to her own supper, and hot up half a bloater on the bit of fire that had looked so cheerful in the front room--though she couldn't above half see it for Uncle Bob gettin' in the way--or to stoast a slice of bread afore the bars with a fair allowance of butter on; or to do what she dared not ask her aunt to do, and lie the four chestnuts, which she still treasured mechanically inside her frock, on the top bar where it was flat, to get the heat back in 'em a bit, before cracking off the shell. So it was inconsistent and absurd in her aunt, after telling her to keep where she was or she would let her know, to return presently with all the supper she would get to-night, comin' in so late, and to add: "I wasn't waited on when I was a little girl. Standin' round, expectin' your elders to fetch and carry!" quite ignoring the fact that she herself had paralyzed her niece's activity by instructions not to go outside of that room until she was told to it. And equally so when, without any evidence that the child was going to say a word, she added: "Now, don't you answer me, for that I can_not_ abide; but just you eat your supper and go to bed, or we shall have you ill next." Of course, it was only when Jim was out of the way that Mrs. Steptoe allowed the shortness of her temper to get the better of her so completely, and on this occasion everything was against elasticity.
Things were all so nightmare-like that nothing could well make them worse, or Lizarann might have been additionally terrified and oppressed when her aunt, before consigning her supper finally to her for consumption, looked it all over closely and said, more to herself than the public: "I don't see any things a-crawling." As it was, in the Valley of Shadows Life was passing through to-night, Lizarann merely said: "There ain't nuffint on the stoast," and began her supper off it sadly. Her daddy's great effort to speak against his pain, and his reassuring words about the doctor, had made that cheerless evening meal a possibility to his little lass. Full knowledge, and a year or so more of life, would have meant inability to eat. But Lizarann was very young, and, moreover, could not credit a possibility of mistake to her daddy. Had he not spoken confidently of the "ship's doctor" making a square job of his leg? She had certainly a slight misgiving that this pointed to his leg assuming a different shape after the operation. All sorts of contingencies hung about Hospitals. You never could tell what grown people wouldn't be at next. But whatever the outcome was, daddy would be there. And this black cloud would roll away.
Aunt Stingy retired, and left Lizarann to herself and her supper with a final imputation of rebelliousness and disobedience that was quite groundless--so its object thought. "You do like I tell you, and go straight to bed when you've e't your supper. Burnin' the candle-ends for nothing!" She then did violence to the understanding, by adding: "The light won't last you out, except you look sharp; and then you'll be in the dark." If a rigid economy was compulsory, how could extravagance be possible? But menace without method was Aunt Stingy's attitude to-night.
Lizarann, left alone, looked all round the tray and under the milk-jug, but could see nothing crawling. She was not so much concerned with the avoiding such things as articles of diet as a County Family would have been, or even the Upper Middle Class; her object was to throw light on her aunt's soliloquy, which she had not ventured to ask the meaning of. Getting no light, she ate the scrop o' bloater, and the stoast and butter, and drank the milk, and did very well, for her aunt was not christened Stingy from any tendency to cut down rations unduly. Only she would have done better still, had she been able to sob less, and if the resources of a pocket-handkerchief ten inches square had not required supplementing by sleeves, which can only be crudely engineered against tear-drops, or their reincarnations. But she got through her supper before ever the candle set alight to the paper, and flared. Then she got to bed before the flare became convulsive; not to be left in the dark with--who knows?--a nightgowned sleeve inside out and no finding where. Because we all feel that spectres are not to be trusted, unless you have something on. Indeed, timid persons are not happy till the whole thickness of the bedclothes is between them and possibly convincing phenomena.
The candle died hard. But Lizarann knew that the longer it took, the less it would taint the atmosphere after its last convulsion, and left it to smoke in peace. So she watched it from her bed that stood in what was little more than a cupboard off the room her father slept in, and cried to think that his was empty. She watched, and wondered which would come first, the last flicker, or her last mouthful of chestnut. For she ate those chestnuts cold, and shoved the shells well under the bolster so Aunt Stingy shouldn't see. She was a very human little girl, was Lizarann, for all she was so devoted to her daddy.
The candle outlived the last chestnut. Then consideration had to be given to the problem how to get to sleep afore the nasty smell come along the ceiling and down. Once asleep, you can ignore smells, even when sut. Sut is the worst, but candlegutter has a nasty flaviour with it. So Lizarann did wisely to go to sleep vigorously.
She was succeeding, and beginning to dream a nice dream, though she wasn't getting warm yet, when her aunt made a tempersome re-entry on the scene. Lizarann woke with a start, and, remembering all the dreadful reality, broke out crying--she couldn't help it! Shaken by one arm, and told to wake up and have done with that petering noise, she recovered self-possession, except for a lagging sob at intervals, and sat up. Directed, inconsecutively, to lie down and go to sleep again, and no more nonsense, she was preparing to comply when her aunt gave a first beginning of a screech and stopped it short.
"Whatever is it?... O Lard!..."
"It's a ch-chestnut sell. I eated it." Confession proved good policy in this case, averting inquiry which would have revealed the hidden store under the bolster.
"O Lard, what a turn it gave me!... he's made me as bad as himself...." The woman had a frantic look about her; her husband's horrors evidently had a sort of infection for her; though of course the child had little insight into this. "You bad child, you! You little good-for-nothing slut, lyin' in bed eating chestnuts, and your father in the Hospital!"
This wounded Lizarann to the quick, and righteous indignation overcame both grief and fear. "I ain't," she shouted, and for the moment quite forgot that she was, or at least had been, the moment before.
"Don't you tell me that, you ontruthful child, and your leavings staring you in the face! Now just you tell no more stories, but say where they've took your father, and what he's done to himself."
This retrospective use of a conviction for untruth--and a morally unjust one--to suggest a course of antecedent misrepresentation on her part, seemed to Lizarann quite the worst piece of mendacity within her experience. But it got the conversation still further away from that nutshell deposit; and that was good, so far. "Father said he'd be took proper care on, and I w-wasn't to c-cry, and I shan't!"
"Can't you tell me where they've took your father to, instead of vexin' me? Is he gone to the Station, or the Hospital?"
"The Spoleece, they carried him off to the Sospital. Yass!" Then, sitting up in bed, a small monument of woe, for the moment tearless, Lizarann considered whether she had grounds for deciding which Hospital. She knew of three, the Smallporks, Guys's, and Bartholomew's, but she was very uncertain about the two last. She decided on denying the Smallporks, if asked. However, her aunt accepted the Hospital as sufficient. Let it go at that!
"What did your daddy say he'd done to his leg? Now, no makin' up! Say the truth, like he told you." This would have been a signal to many children to strain hard to invent the truth out of their own heads. Goaded by stupid, unsympathetic people, they do this in self-defence. But Lizarann was honourable and clear-headed.
"He only saided his leg--didn't say nuffint about it. Only the sip's doctor would make a square job of it. Yass!"
"And what good's your schoolin' done you? Couldn't you have the sense to ask and find? What ever do you suppose God gave you your tongue for?--to set with your mouth wide open? Little plagues can talk fast enough when they ain't wanted to it!" She then suggested, most unfairly, that Lizarann was detaining her by holding out false hopes of information. "I should like to know how long you expect me to stand here askin' questions. This time o' night! And me wanted to look after your uncle! Get down into your bed and ha' done with it! I can't waste my time talkin' to you." After which she departed and locked the door; Lizarann could not imagine why. But there was something very queer with Uncle Bob, who had been audible all the time in fitful outbreaks, conveying a sense of his adjective applied as a stigma to many things, and as a refreshing emphasis to parts of speech.
Lizarann's last impression--a hazy one, before deep sleep came, and total oblivion--was that her aunt went out from the house, leaving the street door on the jar, and that then she heard the voice of their neighbour Mrs. Hacker, saying, "He'll be all right by morning."
Now this little maiden attached only two ideas to this husband of her aunt: one, that he was a painful concomitant of all their lives, who had to be put up with, and where was the use of complainin'?--the other that he was the victim of a liver-disorder known as "the boil." His absorption of gin was part of himself; a practice as much identified with him as any inherent quality or fixed condition; perhaps the celibacy of a priesthood presents a sort of parallel case. So all new and strange developments in Uncle Bob were credited to this disorder, and when Mrs. Hacker from over the way said the patient would be all right by morning, the only suggestion to Lizarann's drowsy mind was that there was a bottle of doctor's stuff never been took, and that it had just come in handy. For--but perhaps you know this?--the masses, par excellence, account all drugs good for all diseases, if took reg'lar. The classes, prone to affectation, get prescriptions made up each time.
So the child was soon sound asleep and happy.
* * * * *
But the cobbler's disorder was the first beginning of the end of a long devotion to gin, and, to speak scientifically--always do so when you can!--he was in a very advanced condition of Alcoholism. But he was very unlike the priest, who, in the most advanced conditions of celibacy, passes his life--poor fellow!--in secret longing for the remedy. For Mr. Steptoe hugged his Alcoholism, caressed it, and fed it constantly with new supplies of raw gin. His affection for the cause of his disease was self-supporting, and he longed for small goes of it as keenly as the priest longs for the proper antidotes of his--for Home and Love.
When Aunt Stingy took such pains to lock her niece into the bedroom she might just as well have locked her husband into the front parlour. But she was deceived by appearances. For it was just--only just--untrue that he had had all the liquor there was. There was a short half-glass in the bottom of an unnoticed bottle, put by to be took back, and a penny on it. On this Steptoe greedily pounced, during his wife's first interview with the child in the next room. It produced that momentary flash that is so misleading in these cases, when actual improvement seems to follow a new stimulus. Often the trembling hand and idiot brain resume skill and coherency, for the moment, only to fall still lower at the next reaction. The woman felt secure in her husband's assurance that he was a blooming sight better, and that he couldn't tell what the described Hell had been the described matter with him. He promised to come to bed as soon as the fire giv' out; and she left him, free from the horrors for the time being, standing with his back agin' the mantelshelf, collecting the last heat with a view to sitting on it--the heat, not the mantleshelf--while he finished through his pipe.
She ought not to have done it. Or she ought to have took the key out of the outside of the bedroom door, or hid it anywheres handy--where he would never have looked for it, Law bless you! Instead, she went to bed herself, and probably fell asleep as soon as a sense of her husband moving, downstairs, seemed to warrant a belief that he was going to keep his word. She slept sound, and it may have been two hours past midnight when she was waked by a movement below, and found that her husband had never come to bed; was still smoking, probably. But this was not her first thought as, having lighted her candle, she sat up in bed, noting the sounds that followed. Her spoken reflection was: "If that's Lizarann prancing about, I'll let her know to-morrow." Then she remembered the key, and couldn't understand the position. And then took advantage of a silence to decide that it wasn't anything. When an "anything" may involve our having to get out of bed in the cold, we are apt to decide on its non-existence. She blew out the candle and lay down again.
* * * * *
This is not a medical work, and it is no part of its business to locate exactly the case of Robert Steptoe in medical records. The discrimination of the symptoms of delirium tremens proper, and their points of difference from those of ordinary delirium--nervous or feverish--are matters of great interest, especially in their relation to treatment, but they belong elsewhere. Our function is limited to recording the symptoms of the case as they have been brought to our knowledge; and we must hope that our medical readers will allow a certain latitude to the description of the only instance of the malady that has come within its writer's experience. Some of it is necessarily conjectural, but nothing would be gained by a laborious effort to separate these portions from the certainties. For instance, the patient's hours in the room alone, after his wife left him, must be matter of surmise. But surmise to the following effect appears well grounded.
So long as the effect continued of the small dose of stimulant he had discovered, he remained sane and free from immediate delusion, and had no other intentions than to smoke through his pipe and follow his wife to bed, as promised. But after he had finished it, and knocked the ashes out--they were found on the hob, and the pipe stuck in the looking-glass frame, when the ground was gone over afterwards--his attention was arrested by something crawling over the table. He had seen one before (as appears by our narrative), in fact, he had seen several, causing a sympathetic horror in Aunt Stingy. He tried to destroy this one, but nothing came of the attempt. Putting a volume on it and crushing it down only caused it to come through the book and crawl over it. He tried this frequently, wondering at the result, but not specially alarmed--more amused perhaps in a kind of vacuous way--until he saw another, and then another. The place was all over them, and he called them names--some very inappropriate--and qualified them all with his favourite adjective. In themselves they really did not matter. But most unfortunately the fact that they were all going in the same direction showed him that they were emanations from a man of the name of Preedy, a leather-seller, of whom he used to purchase ready-closed uppers and cuttings. It was shrewd of him, he thought, to identify Preedy as their original source by the steady way in which they all kept going in one direction. And still shrewder to infer that it was all part of a scheme to oust him from the sort of little kennel or box in which he carried on his trade in a street half a mile off. It was left locked at night; but, seen by the light of these vermin, and a buzzing noise that accompanied them, what was to prevent Preedy getting possession of it and bribing the police on duty to support him in his usurpation? He sat down for a minute or two longer to think this out. The room was always well lighted, because the street gas-lamp, just outside, always showed through the clear space above the shutter.
Reflection did not even suggest that it might be a mistake about Mr. Preedy. If it had, his condition would not have been delirious. On the contrary, it all became clearer to him than ever. If it were not true, how came he to have read half-an-hour since full particulars of it under the heading "Late Entries" in the sporting journal that was still lying on the table? He could find it again in a minute, only it was so dark. He had a match and lit it, to read by; but his hand shook so--always along of that (described) Preedy--that he couldn't master the (described) small type. And his wife had got the candle away. Just like her!--she done it a-purpose. But he knew there was a candle in Jim's bedroom, next door.
The noise he made fumbling at the door, which was of course locked, waked Lizarann, who, having fallen asleep on the fact that her aunt had locked her in, knew that fact and no other as her senses returned. She called drowsily, "You locked the key that side," conceiving the disturber to be her aunt. Contrary to what might have been expected, her uncle understood clearly, and opened the door. But the reason he felt no surprise at the key having been turned outside was one of the indescribables of delirium. It was, somehow, because Lizarann answered instead of Jim. Of course--so it seemed to him--if Jim had answered, it would have been inside. You think that too strange? Try delirium, and see!
His wife had had nothing to gain by telling him of Jim's accident, and his faculties had not been at observation-point. Or, perhaps, he might be said to have forgotten that he had never known that Jim didn't come in to supper. Anyway, he accepted Jim as having gone to bed, and made a sort of apology for disturbing him.
"Ashkpardon mashcandlestick," said he, in two husky words, consisting of matter thrown loosely together, and added, as a single thought that might help, "Looshfermash." He had no idea about time--thought his wife had left him a few minutes since.
Lizarann was not frightened. She did not understand that Uncle Bob imagined her daddy was in his bed as usual; and there was nothing unusual in his coming to look for a lucifer-match. She called out to him without moving: "On the mankleshelf, Uncle Bob." But she was only half awake. She dimly heard him feeling about the room for the candlestick, and muttering to himself. Sporadic examples of his favourite adjective made outcrops in his monologue, becoming more and more frequent as he failed to discover the object of his search. Still, Lizarann thought herself at liberty to remain half-asleep, if she chose.
Not being sure how far she had done so--she might, indeed, have been wholly asleep without knowing it--she could not have said how long this continued. She was roused in the end by the delirious man suddenly exclaiming, in a voice of terror that filled her, too, with terror: "My Goard, then, he has only one!" He then broke out in incoherent fear: "You keep him off of me, master--you keep him off. Or I tell yer, I'll brind him--I will!" At which Lizarann's heart stopped. Not from anything in the words, which were of the sort that she would have told Bridgetticks were "only Uncle Bob." Uncle Bob occurred too frequently in daily life for her to fret much about his language. The cold shiver had run down her back, this time, because she knew there was no one in the room with him. But, may she not have known falsely? Surely there was someone else there, that he was speaking to. Listen!
"Good job you come in, master! You're a good chap, you are. You're Bonyparty, I take it, in the picter-book. You larn him to keep his distance, and I'm your friend. Won't you take nothing? Just a drain?..." He wandered on, with a thickness of speech that, if spelt ever so successfully, would only encumber the text.
Uncle Bob had gone mad, clearly, and would get himself took to the Asylum, where Bridgetticks's Aunt Tabither was. Bridget was very proud of this aunt. And though there might, as in her case, be advantages in the end, the present had to be faced. And poor Lizarann was the only soul that knew anything about it, and was stiff with terror in bed, in the dark, with a speechless tongue, but a calm interior spot somewhere, that was wondering when she would begin to cry out in her agony of fear, yet knew that daddy wasn't there to cry to.
In a few moments she was aware that the breath of the delirious man was catching again, as in terror, and his voice followed: "He ain't gone--he ain't gone! Don't you pay no attention to 'em, master! I can see his eye under the bed, spinning round like a wheel. If there'd a been two of 'em now...." Then in a sudden extremity of terror his voice was worse than if it had been a scream; he forced it from his lungs in a strained whisper. "My Goard!--he's a-coming. He's a-coming on. He'll get me afore he's done, he will.... Leave hold of me! Leave hold, you...." We have to stop short.
Lizarann's impression was that he then struck out to protect himself against his imaginary aggressor. He certainly fell, and was stunned. The child grasped this, and the fact that he was now harmless for the moment. But she was so dumbstricken that it was perhaps the whole of three or four minutes before she could find her voice, and then only for inarticulate hysterical screams.
The fall of Steptoe on the floor was the sound that waked his wife in the room above. The silence that followed was almost long enough to convince her of the safety of going to sleep again. But Lizarann's cries of heartfelt terror and entire panic came to stop that. The woman jumped up and lit her candle, whose wick had smouldered to the grease the last time it was blown out; it had to be coaxed, and a libation of melted paraffin had to be poured off it before it would flare up steady-like, so you could carry it and not spill. It taxed Mrs. Steptoe's nerves to negotiate all this, with that tryin' child making that noise downstairs. But it was either that or go down in the dark. We borrow her own phraseology. Besides, Lizarann had had nightmare and woke everybody, that time Jim gave Bob such a remindin', three months ago. So her aunt made her light secure before going below.
Her expectation was to find her husband in a stupid drunken sleep in the front parlour, and the door of the back room closed as she had left it. She saw the open door and quickened her pace.
"What's that child been after outside of the room? I'll soon know about that...." She soon knew all that could be known at the moment--that her husband, whom she nearly tumbled over, was insensible on the ground--or half-insensible, muttering--and that Lizarann was vociferous with terror in bed, and quite incapable, so far, of telling anything. Her first instinct was faultfinding, as against the child for screaming. "Stop your noise or I'll make you.... Lizarann!... do you hear?... Will you stop?" And then in a voice of vengeful resolution: "I'll be in after you directly." Whereupon Lizarann choked her screams back and waited.
Her aunt was examining Uncle Bob for bruises, so she thought; and he appeared to be resenting the inquiry. Suddenly he recovered his articulation in a wonderful way, and became quite unreasonably angry.
"You'll keep your hands off me, or I'll smack your chops for you." He gathered himself up and got on his legs, but swayed a little as he stood. "What's that you're a-sayin'? Why the (described) Hell can't you speak up? Your tongue's fast enough when nobody's asked you for it. Look you here, Pry-scilla Coupland, I ain't going to be minced about no more, for nobody." Lizarann knew from his calling his wife by her maiden name that her uncle's state was a dangerous one. He did it whenever he became savage with drink. What followed was no improvement. "Ah!--you may go and tell Jim if you like. He's in it, like the rest on 'em. I know all about their planning and scheming. I'll make my affidavit afore a lawyer. First thing to-morrow morning, and make an end of it all. I will!" His manner had such serious conviction in it that the child thought him sane for a moment. It was something grown-up that she didn't know about. Her aunt's reply, with an uneasy half-laugh in it, was an attempt to soothe and conciliate. "Whatever are you fancyin', Robert?" she said nervously. "Who's planning or scheming? Just you come up to bed, and be done with your talk-talk-talk. Affidavits and lawyers! Where shall we be next?"
"Don't you think to take me in!" His reply was in manner perfectly sane and coherent--that of a shrewd man of business, who sees through a clever imposture, being himself cleverer still. "Don't you think to take me in! I wasn't born last Sunday mornin'. Now look 'ee here, Pry-scilla Coupland! Shall I tell yer something I know? Shall I tell yer a little thing I know? A little--little thing?" This was said as a question of superhuman slyness, as he pointed an intuitive finger to emphasize it and waited. Then, quite suddenly, he became ferocious. "What the Hell, do you think I don't know? Do you think I don't know that it's you that's in behind it all? Ah!--you and Jim. One as like as t'other. It's a bloody conspiracy, I tell yer. And I'll make yer pay for it. I'll make yer pay." Still, Lizarann was impressed that he was speaking of something real, as there is nothing per se insane in an idea of a conspiracy, however groundless.
But when he next spoke, she saw that he was really mad. For her aunt, perceiving that her attempt at a soothing tone had only made matters worse, tried a little intimidation. "You wouldn't kerry on like that, Robert, exceptin' you knew Jim wasn't here. But he's a-coming, and I tell it you, for you to know. So just you bear it in mind--there!"
"Jim's over there. I seen him." He pointed to the bed.
"Talking silly, you are! His bed's empty, anyhow! But he's a-coming--that I tell you, plain. Now you come along upstairs."
"Aha!--right you are, Mrs. Hess." This was the initial of Steptoe. He went on with a sly triumphant wrinkling of his face, that mixed oddly with the tremor of eye and lip that is part of this disease. "No, he ain't in that bed. But I can tell yer where he is--he's under it! That's where Jim is. I seen his eye, plain to see!..."
"Jim's eye, ye silly! Come to bed, and sleep your drink off. Ye born fool! Jim's eye!"
"Ah!--Jim's eye. The one he opens at night. He's under-'anded and sly--sees a rare lot more than he'll put a name to! Why, I seen it, God damn you!"--with a sudden revival of ferocity--"I seen it, I tell you, there under that there bed."
Then Lizarann knew that he was mad. Of course, she knew nothing of delirium tremens, but she knew quite well the state often described as "mad drunk," and that her uncle when so affected always became violent; although since that occurrence three months since, fear of Jim had been a wholesome check. Oh, if Daddy were only here!--so thought Lizarann, as she stood in the doorway with her teeth chattering, and literally sick with terror.
"I tell you I seen it, and I'll tell you some more. Only just you stand still. I'm a going for to cut it out, by Goard! Only you wait till I get my * * * knife.... It's round the * * * corner against the window...." These were the last articulate words Lizarann heard, as her aunt followed their speaker into the front room. Then the voices of both in confusion--his raving, hers concealing apprehension badly under an attempt at command. This for a while; then a rapid crescendo of terror ending in a shriek, and an appeal to Heaven-knows-who to get the Police. And Lizarann--not seven yet!--had to make up her mind what to do.