David Penstephen

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The Novels C)|

Chapter I

One of David's early recollections was of being taken out of his warm bed in what seemed like the middle of the night, but was really towards six o'clock of a winter's morning, and dressed by cold candlelight for one of the journeys to which he had been accustomed ever since he was born. Most of his recollections had to do with travelling. This one, more vivid somehow than the rest, stood out afterwards from its fellows. He was still half asleep when he was lifted from the warm pillow, and, protesting, whimpering even a little, he tried to go to sleep again during the first stages of his toilet.

"Now, Master David. Wake up. Wake up, will you? Wake up like a good boy, or are you going to be a naughty one? 'Ow do you think I 'm to get you dressed if you lollop like that, to say nothing of your little sister good as gold over there and surprised at you! With the train to catch and all, do you hear me? There! Let's 'elp, for goodness sake, 'stead of 'inderin'. Put your arms in; now over your little head. That's right. Caught his poor fingers, did I? Careless old Betsy! Ought to know better, didn't she? There's a boy — there 's a little man, though. And now for the wash wash wash."

The wash wash wash woke him. The water was n't properly hot and Betsy was in a hurry. He squirmed and wriggled — 'indering, it is to be feared, very much more than he 'elped. Perhaps the water was nearly cold ; perhaps Betsy's hands, which were kind, were rough. Perhaps the soap did get into his eyes, as he said. But he was awake at last and presently he was dressed.

He stood by the table then and watched Betsy go through much the same exercises with Georgina. Georgina had the advantage of him, however, in having been wide awake by the time her turn came. Georgina made no fuss. Presently two dressed children stood by the table, and watched Betsy as, having finished them, she proceeded to finish herself.

Something had happened the night before. Things often did happen. Later, when David was old enough to observe, he knew that there was something connected with the family that made ' things' always liable to happen. His father's face would wear a frown and his mother's an anxious but unsurprised look, and generally it would not be long before they moved on somewhere else. Arrivals, departures, unpackings and packings, trains, porters, cloakrooms, luggage, douanes, omnibuses, hotels, hotel servants, lodgings, beds with curtains, beds without curtains, beds with mosquito nets, beds in recesses: these were life and life was these. David aged seven took these and took this for granted — for a matter and for matters of course.

There was himself, and there was Father (when there was Father, that is, for sometimes Father was not there), and Mother (almost always Mother), and quite always Betsy. There was also Georgina — since the arrival of Georgina. That was the family. What there was n't, though David did not know it yet, was a home. David's mother, with the pale gentle face and the tired eyes, had almost given up hope that there ever would be.

David had been born at Calais of all places — the mark of the bird of passage on him for always. Some sand, a Tower, and a Gate. But the painters have always known Calais. And Calais: is it not itself a Gate? Most seemly place for your birth, David. One of the gates of France. A little Frenchman? A certain rise in the young days. Georgina was a native of Florence. By the Calais argument Georgina would be held an Italian. You might thus have brothers and sisters every one of whom was of a different nationality, German, Spanish, Austrian, Norwegian — Oriental even at a stretch. Which 'like Euclid' was absurd. You were, of course, what your father was, and David's father was English. So David the schoolboy; before he learned that, even at the cost of hearing himself called a foreigner, it was better, perhaps, not to speak of his father at all. Time enough. It was not near his school-days yet. He was still very much in the nursery, where, though strictly speaking, it was n't a nursery, since it was a bedroom in a hotel, the most intimate and domestic things happened.

Betsy's toilet was always enthralling — such portions of it as her charges were permitted to see performed. These consisted chiefly in the hooking of her stays, an ordinance always put off to the last possible moment and accomplished to a sort of suspended or sectional indrawing of the breath ; and perhaps the doing of Betsy's hair — a large portion of which went on ready done. Then came Betsy's dress, and behold Betsy the shape which she took for the day.

"Doesn't it hurt?" David asked this morning when all was done.

"What hurt?" said Betsy, patting her chignon.

" Not your hair. Nor," as she smoothed out her creases, "buttoning your dress. But when you get the brass things into the eyes. You have to go grunt, grunt, grunt, you know, Betsy."

"Have to go grunt, grunt, grunt," echoed Georgina.

Betsy knocked their heads together smiling.

A waiter, not the one that David had made friends with the day before, came to say that breakfast was ready, and the three went into the sitting-room next door, where the children found their mother and flew to her, and where their father presently joined them.

Nobody talked much after Mr. Penstephen appeared, except Georgina, who from her place beside Betsy kept up a patter of baby prattle.

"Betsy goes grunt, grunt, grunt," she announced k propos of nothing; and Betsy said, " 'Ush, Miss Georgy. Eat your nice bread and milk like a little lady. Look at Master David."

"Is the children's luggage ready?" Mr. Penstephen asked, breaking his own silence.

"I've only to fasten the straps, sir."

Mrs. Penstephen had been crying, she saw. She, Betsy, had heard something of what had happened.

"No, eat your own breakfast, Betsy," Mrs. Penstephen said gently. "One of the eggs is for you. I'll look after Miss Georgy presently while you see to the things. Yes, David, when you 've drunk your milk you can have a little coffee."

"Grunt, grunt, grunt," said Georgina again.

Betsy looked at her master from under her eyebrows, rather to see whether the little girl's prattle was irritating him than from any apprehension for what might come, and smiled to herself.

But "That's what little pigs say," Mr. Penstephen said, running his hand over his daughter's curls.

How kind he was really. How kind — and him so wrong! Why could n't he make her mistress happy? It was plain to see how she suffered. And all for views — just views. Not sinfulness; not deliberate sinfulness. There was no obstacle — no cause or impediment. Just views and cleverness; and look how these things affected those whom he loved! She watched him with his child — his girl child; his boy he did not understand so well. Yet "Now, David, your coffee — and a nice flat lump of sugar"; he loved his boy too. All for views and cleverness — wrong-headedness she called it. Wrong-headedness, obstinacy. "I should just like to shake him."

Her egg was delicious — as good as an English egg, though it had been laid by a Belgian hen. She had been up since before five o'clock packing, and was hungry.

Betsy enjoyed her breakfast.

^ "Now 'm. A quarter of an hour will see us ready."

Georgina had finished her breakfast, David his; so she took the children with her, while her mistress went to put on her hat and coat, and her master to pay the bill.

There were no cheerful leave-takings in that hotel. No au revoirs from bowing officials and servants. Even the waiter whom David had made friends with kept out of the way. But to David's delight, at the very moment when his father was saying, "We never set foot there again," David espied him looking out from behind one of the blinds in the coffee-room, and received a deprecating wave of the hand from him which he longed to but dared not return. The Penstephens were leaving Brussels in gravest displeasure.

Then came the usual journey. But every journey was a new adventure to the funny little boy in the Scotch cap, the knickerbocker suit, the knitted comforter, and the pilot's-cloth great-coat. Children were oddly dressed in those days — but so was every one else. David's father, for instance, wore a black coat and check trousers travelling, and changed his rather square felt hat in the train for a cap which had been bought at a bookstall. His mother wore what was known as a "polonaise," a round sealskin jacket, and a hat which sloped up towards the back from her forehead; a string of onyx beads as large as marbles round her neck; and carried her watch in a watch-pocket. Betsy wore . . . but, goodness, what did not Betsy? — who was the shape, moreover, if not quite the size, of a pillar box! Yet the family looked distinguished. People, pointing them out or asking perhaps who they were, said, "Those nice-looking people," — till they were - old, when they left out 'nice-looking' at once and put worlds of meaning into what remained. Those people! Those. Betsy was thus the imposing servitor of the distinguished, or the damaged hanger-on of the damaged, and both, in less time than it takes to say so.

David kneeling on the seat looked out of the window — not the big square window of these days, but a pane shaped like the lower half of a moon in its second quarter. Dusty blue curtains, hung on ivory rings, had to be pushed back from time to time.

"What are you looking at, David?"

He was so intent that his mother had to repeat her question.

"What do you see out there?"

He started and turned back to the inside of the compartment.

"The telegraph wires."

Then David's mother watched them too. They dipped, down, down. Now they were going up. They seemed to be engaged in a struggle to rise. Up. Up. They were going up. They would go surely right up to where they would be safe. When they seemed nearest to the attainment of their wish, a pole suddenly, and down they would come again with a rush ! It was as if they could not escape? — evade? They were like many things, but mostly things hunted or trapped: hunted things seeking covert and overtaken at the brink of safety; hunted people — slaves, say — making for sanctuary, detected, caught or shot down; flies that nearly succeeded in disentangling themselves from webs; men trying to rise — perhaps on ' stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things,' but always, always dragged down; creatures swimming for dear life ever to be washed back with the wave that had brought them almost to the shore.

"Germany next, David. How shall you like that?"

"Groschen," said David who had been there and knew.

"Kreuzers," said his father. "More in your line, my son."

"Koitzers," echoed Georgina.

"Marks," said David stoutly.

"Marks," said Georgina.

"I once had a florin," said David.

They had the compartment to themselves. The racks were full of their luggage: valises, the carpetbag, the hold-all, 'straps,' a square box in a brown holland cover bound with red tape : the odd hand-luggage of the sixties and seventies — a dressing-case (Mother's) with tortoiseshell fittings inside it, including a comb with a tail ; another dressing-case (Father's) with silver fittings and a secret drawer; the Dispatch Box (also Father's); some toys; a watering-can put to strange uses; The Shawl (a large plaid square capable of enveloping both children) and some rugs. Mrs. Penstephen was wrong if she thought that her children had no home.

What a domestic scene they and these must have presented, David often thought when he looked back to the young years of the travelling! The intimate, familiar things which accompanied them made the railway carriage an intimate, familiar place — fit setting for the family group. Father, mother, son, daughter, with Betsy servant and friend.

All the odd luggage, even to the corded trunks in the luggage van, had the tender value in retrospect of things loved and lost. No household gods, no chairs or tables or sofas or cupboards or chests-of-drawers or book-cases or pictures, were ever more closely connected with a life than, say, the holland-covered box with David's. He had lived his seven years to the sight of it. It was as much a part of his mother as the rings on her fingers, and it was thus somehow a very part of him.

And how respectable! Respectability must have been the dominant note of that assemblage of persons and things. An English gentleman of good position and sufficient means, an English lady of delicate and 'refined' appearance, their well-bred presentable children, their children's elderly comfortable nurse: the valises, carpetbag, hold-all, dressing-cases, straps, etc., etc. Could Mr. and Mrs. Grundy themselves with family and luggage have shown more blameless a front? '

Now came the guard to look at the tickets, climbing dangerously along the footboard outside the carriages, and, the window having been let down, putting his head and shoulders in at the aperture.

"Ze tickets."

"Father can speak French," David kad to say, and wanted to add, "Even I can."

"Les billets, alors, Monsieur," said the guard, bowing to David who fetched them from his father, and handed them one by one — three wholes and two halves as he pointed out — to the guard who proceeded to clip them. Georgina on Betsy's knee had to be held up to see too.

A domestic scene. All that there was of most domestic and respectable.

CHAPTER II Something had, indeed, happened at the hotel in Brussels

— the sort of thing that had always been liable to happen, only somehow rather more dreadful than ever had happened before. Aloofness was the most that happened generally

— aloofness covering coldness, recedings, withdrawals, and the usual starings or blindnesses. People saw the Penstephens only too well, or did not see them at all. They made friendly overtures — to the children, perhaps, the strange little ruminant David, or the engaging Georgina — and, inexplicably, or anyway unexplainedly, retreated. David deep down in his soul had always known. Georgina, too young, and also too content, to be perceptive, did not know. But this time things had gone further.

Some one — a great lady, an old client, the kind that bowing hotel managers dare not or will not offend — had given her ultimatum. "Either those people or I."

The scraping manager was to take his choice. It had of course to be Those People. Madame, with her companion who was almost her lady-in-waiting, her secretary, her maids (two) and her courier, had a suite upon the first floor. Her ultimatum, since she breakfasted, lunched, and dined in her own apartments, and need, and would, it is probable, have seen as little of the persons who outraged her as if continents instead of stairs and corridors had separated her from them, was preposterous — a piece of self-righteous despotism. But she had spoken. They or she. The matter, the hotel manager gathered, had something to do with the roof. Madame, representing outraged virtue, and they, open scandal, could not, it seemed, sleep under the same slates.

"If I put them in the D^pendance? A separate entrance as Madame knows. Only the public salons. I go to

Monsieur. I say, * Your rooms un'appily we find engaged. A mistake most regrettable. An erreur. But in the D6- pendance . . .'"

Madame felt her bracelets — slabs of jet upon parallel strings of elastic; the centre slab on each wrist showing, if you please, a coronet in diamonds — and was silent. She had spoken.

"Oh, pardon, miladi. It shall be as Madame wishes. But of course. I go to Monsieur without delay. The rooms engaged; the D6pendance un'appily quite full, ^a s'arrangera."

Her great-ladyship bowed.

"The gentleman will understand, I think," she said grimly. "But I give you full permission to mention my name."

The companion, who scraped nearly as much as the manager, said, " I think you 're quite right," as soon as the manager had scraped himself out of the room. "Quite, quite right."

"Of course I'm right."

"Yes, that's what I say, dear."

"Of course it's what you say."

"Well, I only— "

"Yes, dear, I know."

We leave these ladies agreeing with each other.

The manager's part was more difficult. He had 'agreed,' to be sure, but in a different sense, and he wished himself well through a bad quarter of an hour. These old women were monsters. As well hope to reason with basilisks. He did not suppose that the ' un'appily engaged ' would work with Mr. Penstephen. He did not see himself saying that the Dcpendance was full either. He did not, for that matter, see the Dependance entering at all into the question. Scraping might do the thing. There was, of course, always insolence to fall back upon. But he did not somehow see himself, or indeed any one else, being insolent to Mr. Penstephen.

The old woman had said that he might mention her name. So be it.

He nerved himself to what might be before him.

Mr. Penstephen spoke as little as the basilisk. He heard M. Quarantier out. He did not speak, indeed, for some moments after M. Quarantier had told what he had to tell, but this does not mean till after M. Quarantier had finished speaking. M. Quarantier did not seem able to finish speaking. He could have stopped excusing himself if his guest would only interrupt him. He heard himself going over the ground again and again. He did not speak for himself, Monsieur would see. He was, Monsieur knew, the servant of the company owning the hotel. He was helpless. Madame la comtesse — the Countess of Harbington, a great English lady with estates he understood in the islands of Ireland and Wight (Monsieur doubtless would know) — came every year. But every single year. It would not do to offend — but would not do. These great ladies. Monsieur knew. He, the hotel manager, was by example without prejudices. One arrived, one stayed, one paid one's bill. One — the hotel now — asked no questions. Where would a hotel be asking questions? Ah, he should think so, there were whom one could not receive. Oh, by example. But these one knew at a glance. They asked the best rooms, too, these sometimes; so money was nothing to go by. But Monsieur, Madame, and the little ones, so distinguished, so well placed, so amiable. All that there was of most desirable. He would only ask Monsieur to think of him as one who performed a duty — a duty most unreasonable, most uncalled for, against his inclination, his will.

"For me I ask no better patrons. But what can I, me? I throw myself upon the goodness, the generosity, the kind discretion of Monsieur ..."

Still Mr. Penstephen did not speak. A calm, attentive eye rested on the scraper. He seemed, indeed, to be listening with his eyes. M. Quarantier, generally so bland, so complacent, felt as if he were being slowly taken to pieces.

It was then that he made his mistake. Constrained to go on speaking, constrained by Mr. Penstephen's very silence, he was unwise enough to recommend another hotel.

"In this town?"

In the rue So-and-So. Monsieur would find it very comfortable. When the hotel was full they often sent on their patrons there. If Monsieur would permit, a note very express should be sent round —

The storm broke. The rest was another sort of silence altogether — the silence in which the family left the next morning. Mr, Penstephen never 'set foot' again in Brussels. Mrs. Penstephen, more forgiving, perhaps, more understanding certainly, did in after years; but not till enough water had flowed under the bridges to wash to faintness the recollection of her tears and her humiliation.

The frown gradually left Mr. Penstephen's face. David did not observe this, but he was conscious of a lightening or a brightening generally. It was as when a lamp which has been burning, but burning dully, is turned up. Betsy became more cheerful. She talked to the children and might have been supposed to be inviting some one whose face did not at once change to be of good cheer. She painted the joys of nice lodgings after hotels — they were going to lodgings; the teasyoucouldhave with thehelpof anatna; real English tea which you made yourself; pots of jam; bought cakes — none of your hotel pastry. No foreign hotel understood tea. Oh, yes, you could have tea — T. H. E. — such a way to spell it! No wonder it did n't taste right! — but when you had tried it a time or two you always fell back upon coffee, which she granted you they could make. That showed pretty well what their tea was like. David was just to think. You brought the water in the setna up to a boil, put your tea in the teapot (having warmed that), poured in the boiling water which went in with oh, such a gurgle; let stand for a minute or two, and there you were. Betsy thought the sound of water being poured into a teapot (earthenware for choice — or, of course, silver, but never 'metal' nor anything Hke that) from, if possible, a black kitchen kettle, polished but with just a belt of soot on it, the most musical sound in the world.

" I know it," said David. " It 's right down in the teapot's stomach,"

"Say heart, dear."

It was Mrs. Penstephen. She was listening, then? There was a smile on her lips as she spoke.

"Have teapots hearts?" asked David,

"Have little boys stomachs!" said Betsy. "And nice bread-and-butter cut from the loaf. To be sure that's tar-teens, but tar-teens always did seem to me to go better with coffee, and it's tea we're talking about. I'll make such tea in the lodgings! You'll all be glad to be done with hotels for a little. I '11 make such tea."

"You make me want to arrive," said David's mother. "No, we don't get tea like yours, Betsy, in hotels."

"It's all the boil of the water," said Betsy.

She had diverted her mistress's thoughts from what occupied them, and that was what she wanted.

The talk of the tea, moreover, had made them all hungry, and it was really nearly time for luncheon — quite nearly enough, anyway, after their early start, to make them all welcome the thought of it. Mr. Penstephen got down the square box, and its cover was loosened just sufficiently to allow the lid to be raised. Betsy became an upright pillar box at once, and having deposited Georgina upon the seat by her mother, helped to make ready. The cold chicken which she had been out to buy the night before was ready carved. The pulling of a pink riband released wings, slices of the breast, thigh bones, drumsticks. There were buttered rolls; pinches of salt in paper. There was a bottle of wine for the elders (Betsy bidden to share it), a bottle of milk for the children. There were little tartlets — a sponge cake, or the Belgian equivalent of a sponge cake, for Georgina — and there were some grapes. No restaurant cars then, no organised system of luncheon baskets. The tray of the holland-covered box represented what had not then been invented.

Everybody felt better for having eaten — even Mrs. Penstephen, Betsy knew. Betsy was wonderful. Her bosom was a haven of shelter and comfort for more than the heads of children. In the spirit her mistress's head had lain there and been pressed there often and often to the binding-up of the bruised heart. Once it had actually been held there, and neither ever forgot. That marked a crisis.

Mrs. Penstephen, watching her as she cleaned up and tidied and put away, thought of that now. Her movements were extraordinarily deft. How neatly everything fitted back into its place. She never seemed to hurry and yet was so quick. There, all was stowed away again. No fear that the lid would not close down under, or rather over, Betsy's skilful packing. Now she was turning the key in the lock; now readjusting the holland cover; now with a strong hoist swinging the box — which held other things below the tray and was heavy — up into the rack again ; and now, all signs of the recent meal removed, perching Georgina again on to the place where her lap would have been if she had had a lap, and settling down once more as the children's nurse.

She caught her mistress's eye fixed upon her and smiled.

"I should n't be surprised but what we did n't some of us drop off before very long."

Georgina dropped first — but not off her perch. David next, his head against his mother's warm sealskin. Then Mr. Penstephen in his corner, his long legs stretched out under his rug. But neither Betsy slept, her arms clasped round the sleeping Georgina, nor Mrs. Penstephen, who took David's hand into her muff.

"Betsy, it was dreadful."

The words came of the memory and the meeting of the eyes.

"Oh, 'm, don't think of it. And we shall be so much

*appier in lodgings. I believe myself we always should be. Hotels are all very well, but there's the people and one thing and the other, and I 'm sure, though trouble 's saved for you, what with the housekeeping done for you, and the service and so on, I don't in me own mind privately think — not meself , that is — that it makes up for not having a place of your own, so to speak. Lodgings, now, or — how would it be — a nice — well, a nice furnished house?"

" I 've thought of that. I 've often thought of that. But again there would be difficulties. It might not be every one who would care to let to us."

"Show such your banker's reference, 'm. Let 'em see the colour of money. One gold-piece is as good as another all the world over."

"Our gold-pieces don't seem to have counted for much where we've come from to-day," said Mrs. Penstephen.

"Ah, hotels," said Betsy. "People — 'erded up Hke."

"Not much herding. She had her own suite of rooms, I'm told. No, there would be difficulties."

"Abroad, do you think, 'm? Or, come to that, at home. London. Think how big it is. Why, you can get lost in it. There's whole districts. Beautiful houses where nobody lives that you and the Master 'd be likely to know. Big houses, too. With gardens. Or there's small country places."

"The country would n't do. The country would be quite out of the question. The country — just think."

Betsy just thought.

People calling and not calling. True. Difficult to say which would be worse. No, the country, she supposed, would not do.

But London — some nice unfashionable quarter. Why, in London, even in good neighbourhoods, you did n't know the name sometimes of people who lived next door to you, and as to people in the next street — why, you did n't know them so much as by sight.

But Mrs. Penstephen shook her head. Dreamsi Dreams !

Dreams were not for her. It was no good thinking of London. It could n't be England at all.

David stirred in his sleep. She settled his head more comfortably against her sealskin. Betsy, leaning forward without dislodging Georgina, pulled the rug up about her and the slumbering boy.

Neither spoke for a few minutes after that. The train swung on with its even unevenness. Outside the telegraph wires rose and dipped unheeded.

Betsy said, "Would n't you try to sleep, 'm, a little? You 've hours to make up. Let me have Master David here by me. He'd be off again in a minute."

But Mrs. Penstephen was not sleepy. She had even slept in the night, she said. It was poor Betsy who had the hours to make up. She must have spent one half of the night packing, and the other half —

"There can't have been much other half. It must have been time to get up almost as soon as you got to bed."

"Oh, bless you, 'm, I don't mind. Went to me heart, though, to wake Master David. That boy '11 always have one comfort through life. He '11 be able to sleep away his troubles. There's an endowment for anybody. There's a — what shall I call it? — equipment. That's it. As good as a armour. Like taking a refuge about with you. Something to creep into and lie snug in till the storm's past."

Mrs. Penstephen looked at her sleeping son. The shadow had not fallen upon him yet, or if it had, he could not be conscious of it. But it must fall upon him. Let him sleep. He would need equipment; armours, refuges.

Betsy guessed what her mistress was thinking. It sent her own thoughts back to the events of the last twenty-four hours.