The porcelain lady

Contents

CHAPTER

. RELATIVE To “CERTAIN QUALITIES”

Biur WINGs

CHAPTER I: Btiue WIncs

As it is with us breathing mortals who appear variously to diverse minds, so it was with the white lady, she of porcelain, who stood over her white reflection on the polished surface of John Brough’s table—the table in his flat, not the one in the Weekly, Daily, and Hourly offices.

John Brough, by the way, was a rolling stone who had rolled into a newspaper office one day, and remained there, as it were, in a crack. Journalism is perhaps the only profession that welcomes rolling stones.

As for his white lady of porcelain who stood seven inches high and all ways round was beautiful, with the lines of her pensive head, gracious neck, and sweeping crinoline—for one beholder she was merely her dainty, ornamental, bric-a-brac self. To another she suggested puppet shows ; to another the Italian Comedy, or the Russian dancers.

To Blandley she seemed like Ettie Wilson. To another she seemed like Ruth Winter.

Mapleton Wild, when he saw her, jumped to a conclusion, which was Mapleton Wild’s way. He considered that no man not blinded by love could think that that exquisite porcelain lady was the slightest bit like Miss Ettie Wilson. He did not say so to Brough; but he thought so; and he quoted a tag of Schopenhauer under his breath.

One of the reporters wondered if John Brough kept her there as an ornament, or as an ideal to keep him from liquor ; for surely no man, he conjectured, could come home a little bit inebriated to such a beautiful creation, not even that sad poet who wrote : ** T have been faithful to thee—a/ter my fashion.”

Sanctley, the head reporter, who came up to see Brough one bank holiday when all the publichouses were closed, with restless eyes examined the room for a possible decanter, found none, looked under the table for a possible bottle secreted there-—and then gave it up—wSanctley, seeing the little white lady, said: “Is that little statuette merely or-r-r-na-mental, or is there some ’— Brough looked quietly at him—“ utility about her ? ”

** She could be used as a bell,” said Brough ; “ or at least some copies of her are made as bells, with a small tongue hanging inside the crinoline affixed by a piece of ribbon.”

Sanctley turned the figure upside down.

‘“‘T see no place to affix the tongue and make it of use,” he said.

“No,” said Brough. “ That one has not a place for the tongue. I would have cut it off at anyrate.”

“Oh! It’s not the only one, then,” said Sanctley, setting it down. “I thought perhaps if it had not utility it had at least the value of being unique, and so possessed a monetar-r-ry value—for there are people, you know, Brough,” he explained, “‘ who buy things just because they’re rar-r-re.”’ |

Perhaps Sanctley was really trying to pump Brough. I don’t know. Certainly I am sure that the most brazen, direct, openly cross-questioning reporter of the W. D. & H. (or any other) offices, who carried into private life the inquisitorial manner, and turned conversation, even with friends and acquaintances, into a catechism, would not have eared to say to Brough, frankly and insolently : ‘* Is she there as a symbol, or as portrait of some real woman ?”

As a matter of fact there was a woman in it.

The lady for whose sake that five inches of fragile white statuette took on an additional lustre and twinkling porcelain personality, was Ruth, the daughter of John Winter, by his wife, Amelia.

They dwelt in Maida Vale, London, N.W., in a house over against a canal, a squarely built house with huge gardens (at least, for London) to rear and front. Mr Winter was retired. His money, sufficient to retire upon the interest accruing from it, he had hoarded in Hastings; and there Ruth had been educated.

She had lived mostly not with her parents, but in the house of an uncle (her father’s brother)—that is, when not at school. I say in the house; but really she spent as much time out and about with the uncle as indoors. His wife, who thought (perhaps rightly ; I do not wish to be controversial) that consanguinity should be more dynamic than personal predilection, was hurt because of his affection for his niece. But she would have been more hurt had it seemed to her a “real affection.” Though he was to be seen abroad everlastingly with Ruth, “* his own daughter,” as Mrs James Winter commented, ‘was still his daughter, you know.” The cabmen on the ranks used to say, seeing James Winter passing with the pigtailed daughter of John Winter, she holding his sleeve, dancing by his side so that the pigtails danced too: “There goes James Winter with his little pal.” From these two comments, his wife’s and the cabmen’s, you can gather the position.

James Winter spent his life (apart, that is, from those hours of it devoted to business and sleep) in buying old furniture, old miniatures, fobs, candlesticks. Edwin Abbey might have paused in passing to look again, delighted, at the living picture of old James Winter scrutinising a bronze candlestick, one like a Dorie column, in a dim and twinkling interior, an interior full of spindle-legged tables, and grandfather clocks, and long-handled brass bed-warmers, and three-cornered cupboards with Dresden shepherdesses behind their glass, and noted, over in a corner, Ruth, fourteen years of age, playing on a spinet. That was an incident that stood out in her life (memory niched it, or framed it), with a charm she could not ever define.

Do not imagine that she was ill-treated at home because you find her straying about with her uncle. Her mother was much better to her than the average Hastings mother to her offspring. When Ruth went down to the sea on stormy days and came home drenched, her mother only laughed. So she grew up with a love of the sea and of old candlesticks and corner-cupboards.

A quaint child. In her uncle’s home she pored over books on costume, and grew up to love costume and be regardless of dress ; so that wise dressmakers used to glance twice at her attire and note this, or that, to adapt; and young ladies who were wearing the moment’s confection, whether it suited them or not, not infrequently looked upon her with glances not like the glances of the wise dressmakers. But of such undiscerning creatures she was generally unconscious ; if she chanced to note them she never troubled to consider the difficult question of whether they were chorus girls or the wives of peers.

All discerning persons loved her, and none could spoil her.

The presentation to her, by her uncle, of a puppet show, and the interest in that show which her mother took, aiding in the costuming of characters, delving out, from some cell in her mind, a capacity—pigeonholed there by God in case of need—for writing little plays—these were big matters in Ruth’s life.

At the age of eighteen she turned her thoughts to the stage; but, for some reason, perhaps because her well-intentioned mother sent her to the wrong theatrical manager, she did not stay longer than three weeks under the eye of the shaven celebrity who had been paid handsomely to train her. Ruth looked at him one day with such excessive tranquillity, serenity, sobriety, gravity, that he did not quite understand she meant her quietly spoken, “I shall never come back here again,” till she had turned about, departed, and he felt himself forced to boomerang a very loud ‘‘ Hem!” into the silence that she left behind. Sobriety, gravity, serenity, he knew not. He moved in a world of mannequin people. Public opinion was divided. Some, seeing her go, ran to shake hands with her, and embrace her; some made their mouths into carmine pinpoints and drooped their eyelids ; one or two said ‘** Bravo!”; several giggled. Ruth dismissed the incident from her mind and went out into the sunshine.

There are other ways of expression in the world besides the histrionic. There are other wheels on which butterflies may flutter, seeing that wheels are essential in this world, besides the Thespian. And though, perhaps, the usage is, when anyone shows any tendency, to profane it (thus: if a man is volatile and has a pleasing voice to make him a tout for bad pills; if a boy shows a love of animals to put him among them in a butcher’s shop; if a girl loves dancing to make her a high-kicker), though, as I say, the usage may be, perhaps, to profane tendencies so, sometimes the possessor of a gift may turn the attempt at its profanation into aid, grow enraged at the meddling and hit ; or grow dignified before it, and unassailable ; and so, either way, pass on unsmirched—and the gainer.

When she was nineteen Ruth received a letter from Cromarty, managing editor of the Weekly, Daily and Hourly Press, asking if she would be good enough to call at the offices and talk over a sketch which she had submitted.

To gain these offices you turn aside from the jostling pavements of Fleet Street, going east, before you reach Ludgate Circus. The side street is narrow. It is generally blocked, in so far as the street proper is concerned, by drays heavily loaded with monster rolls of paper; and on each roll is a placard which reads: ‘“‘ Paper for the Weekly, Daily and Hourly offices.” These drays are driven in a roundabout way from the station, by instruction of the advertising manager. Horses, standing in the gutter between the dray shafts, toss their feed-bags in air and scatter corn about their forelegs; and between their hoofs the leaping, nervous, soot-grimed, blue-barred pigeons pick and leap, pick and leap, or, observing the temerity of the sparrows, cast aside their fears for a few minutes and pick furiously. There comes an explosion from some motor omnibus passing in

Fleet Street. That sound echoes down the side street like the report of a pistol, and the anxious pigeons take flight with clacking wings. The sparrows remain.

Half-way down this street you come upon message boys bending down at the wall, making it difficult for you to pass on the narrow pavement. The boys are gaping down into the basement of the Weekly, Daily and Hourly offices, delighted at the sight of wheels going round, and marvelling at the monster three-deckers vomiting out papers for the people to read, dozen by dozen, so quickly that the gaping message boys see little but a blur; copies of+ The Evening One, of The Weekly Paper, of Lovely Woman, of Baby Bunting, of But enough ; these are the offices of the Weekly, Daily and Hourly.

It is quite true that over the outer lintel of the W. D. & H. offices, chiselled in the keystone, was the motto, for all the world to see, ‘‘ We give you the

Best,” while over the inner lintel was the adage, “ Keep down the standard—keep the circulation up’; but the W. D. &. H. office was not a crushing place. Here there was a spirit of live and let live. These two adages, conflicting, actually inculcated a kind of sweetness and light spirit, a half-smiling, half-sarcastic mood in which to comprehend the B words: ‘‘ Let him who is without sin amongst you cast the first stone.”

Nobody need ever be broken on the wheel at the W. D. & H. offices—without his or her explicit consent. There were all sorts of ways out. Here.it did not matter whether you were rich or poor, pretty or plain, well dressed or ill dressed, fashionably dressed or tastefully dressed—so long as the circulation was going up.

Ruth was something of a Fatalist, like most of us, and when she entered the offices, after a somewhat tense journey down from Maida Vale (for she was a woman good at the moment, tense before, and wornout after) she entered happily. The atmosphere welcomed her. Intuitively she felt the welcome.

Perhaps she had been rendered Fatalist because one day, just after the removal of her people from Hastings to Maida Vale, her aunt—Mrs James Winter —had come up to London to see a specialist about ** something in her inside,’”’ and had been told that if she were not operated upon immediately she would be dead in a week.

“Will the operation itself be risky ?”’ she had asked.

“It is a major operation, certainly,” the specialist had replied, glinting knives at her from his eyes.

‘“T'll not be operated upon,” she very definitely had asseverated, had gone back to Hastings to put the house in order, to cover the last Jam-pots, recover a worn cushion, titivate here and there in the stucco villa, and then pass away to join her progenitors. And behold, she still lived, happy ever after, singing about the house or making new jam, to go the same way as all the jams and jellies of yesteryear.

So Ruth entered the W. D. & H. offices happily.

Mr Cromarty, the managing editor, began by telling her that he liked the little sketch that she had submitted.

“Tam very glad,” she replied demurely, and wondered how he paid.

“Very much,” he repeated. “ It shows—you will allow me to say so, as I am an editor—distinct x she could not remember whether he said “ power ” or “promise.” She decided, in telling her father all about it later, that it must have been “ promise.”’ Really it was “power” that Cromarty said, but perhaps he meant “ promise ”

and was just being “ nice.”

“Tm so glad,” she thanked him soberly.

“As it stands, however,” he began gently, and then fired off at her, “‘ we could not use it !”’

He looked sharply at her, and she did not wilt. She merely remarked :

“Oh! Ym sorry.”

But Cromarty saw a shadow pass in her eyes, though she did not wilt.

‘Perhaps you will take it back,” he said, as if asking a favour, “‘ and probably,” his voice rang encouragingly, ‘“‘ you will find some other market for it.” She took the manuscript from his hand, amazed at the ways of editors. “Really, what 1 wanted to see you for was

” He ran his firm ivory hand up his face, felt his chin, for his secretary had come in. She laid some papers on a side desk and passed out again noiselessly.

‘** There is some work that we want done for us,” said Cromarty, progressing into the plural, “and I thought from indications in this ’—he perceived that his hand was empty and that she held the sketch— * that sketch, that you might be the wwmman to do it for us.”

He looked so sharply at Ruth that she wondered if he were testing her manners, and pronounced and accented “‘ woman.”’ in that way to see if she would giggle. The terrible part of it was that she wanted to laugh outright because of the way he glared, and shouted the word. But there was here, of course, no testing of Ruth’s breeding. Cromarty’s pronunciation was faultless, except for two words—wumman and shuggar. The inclination to give one little “tut!” of laughter at the unexpectedness and explosiveness of “‘wumman ” having passed, Ruth sat there feeling a little dejected; for, whatever this frock-coated, black-haired, black-eyed, brownskinned man was thinking, the manuscript was rejected. .

Cromarty noticed the dejected look and guessed that she was really broken-hearted, so fired off: “We think you could write on children’s games, children’s little ways, and so forth.”

“Oh, dear me!” said Ruth meditatively. ‘‘ Oh, dear me!” thoughtfully, slightly perturbed. ‘“* Ah, well, I read the other day in your Daily Paper, among the Personal Notes, that Grant Allen ” (at the words * your Daily Paper ’’ Cromarty peered at her sharply to discover if she were a flatterer) “‘ wanted to be a writer on scientific subjects, and had to write novels instead.’’ (He decided that she was not a foolish flatterer.) “* Perhaps poor me need not turn up my nose at writing about children instead of writing costume stories.”’

“Grant Allen ? Oh yes, of course. Grant Allen ! Yes,” said Cromarty. ‘° But I don’t think, if I may be allowed to say so, that you are the kind of wamman to turn up your nose at anything.” He paused. “And of course you like children ? ”

‘“‘T’m not excessively drawn to them,” she said a little shamefacedly.

It was a bond of union between them, for Cromarty’s wife had presented him, that morning, with twins. It was a proceeding that was to become a habit with her, of which more anon.

‘Not until they grow up,” Ruth added. “ And certainly a baby in arms looks to me like a badly set calf’s-foot jelly.”

Cromarty pursed his lips together and puckered his cheeks, and his eyes danced.

He wanted to have This on the staff.

‘*‘T have no doubt,” he said, ‘‘ that we have an opening for you—to begin at two pounds two shillings a week, let us say, and, after three months—reconsider, if both sides are pleased so far, and then probably three pounds three shillings a week. You will see better by then—and so shall we—what your special forte may be.”

‘You think I have some capacity ? ” she asked.

He looked at her and smiled, mute.

““Oh yes—you must, of course, or else you wouldn’t have asked me to call.”

Very soon thereafter, instead of sitting in the study of the Maida Vale house, inspiring herself toward creation by turning over the pages of a Kate Greenaway album, or a book illustrated by Preston MacGoun, Ruth came up to town daily and sat in a room before a roll-top desk, acting editress of Lovely Woman, with a Brussels carpet under her feet, which was pleasant, and a telephone bell in the wall at her back, which was. unpleasant.

When the telephone bell rang it seemed to be in her spine. So, at last, when Cromarty was on his rounds one day, scattering bonhomie and camaraderie abroad, hands full of letters and proofs, she broke the ice and, timidly, in response to his suggestion that she wore a worried look, told him that the bell rang in the small of her back.

‘“'That’s easily settled,” he said, whirled round and, unhooking the receiver, gave orders for a man to come immediately and remove it from the wall.

“Oh!” Ruth ejaculated. “I could move the desk. Inever thought of that.”

“Hh ?”? Cromarty screamed in falsetto, swiftly considering her slender build. “ True—you could have the desk moved for you. But no. This wall apparatus is antiquated. You will have a desk standard and receiver.”

Ruth sat back in her chair and put a hand behind her back and twiddled with the upright bars of the chair, staring at her desk the while, considering that to have a telephone on one’s desk, under one’s very nose, was terrible also. At any moment it might ring, like a warning rattlesnake.

Why had she not thought to suggest the removal of her desk to the far end of the room and the turning of its back outward, so that she might be far from the bell, and, when it rang suddenly, interrupting her, be able to confront it over the top of the desk ?

Cromarty was still occupied in hearkening at the receiver.

“Yes. At once? Oh! Now? Good.”

He turned to Ruth.

‘There is a spare table in my room,” said he. * You could pop down there with your papers if you like, while the change is being made—or go home for the day if the man messing about would worry you—and you prefer.”

But Ruth, as you know already, could not be spoiled. And besides, it was now close on four o’clock. .

Daily, from four o’clock to a quarter to five there was a lull in the whirlpool of the offices ; or, if you prefer it, the wheel moved more slowly and the butterflies could stop fluttering, the squirrels could step easily, taking breath.

At that part of the afternoon, if it were summer-time, the younger members of the staff could be observed standing upon tables in the packing-room, hanging tin kettles over gas-jets. If it were winter they would turn their attention to the fires. Soon the odour of tea percolating through the building would cause the women to sit back and adjust their hair, look at their hands, comment that they felt

’ educe towels from pigeon-holes or from

* orubby,’ typewriter covers ; and anon the tip-tapping of their Louis heels, in the corridor leading to the ladies’ washroom, would blend daintily with the other sounds of the orchestration—men clearing their throats, telephone-room girls wrestling with the junior reporters, telephone bells ringing, delivery motor cars being wound up in the courtyard behind. From the door of The Evening One issued generally some speech after this fashion: ‘“‘ When I was at Cambridge I used to spend nearly every vacation with my father’s oldest friend, Admiral Dreadnaught, and 1 can remember him (he was an authority, you know), I can remember him saying to me, ‘My dear boy, mark my words, the day will come when Germany will—— ”

It was at this hour of the afternoon that Ruth was wont to turn aside from the corridor that led to the washroom, and ascend, slow and swinging, pulling herself up by the old baluster, to the flight above, the attic flight, where silence and spiders reigned, and one lonely fly buzzed everlastingly against a dusty skylight, droning more loudly than the office murmur which mounted there. Thence, up a ladder which led to a trap-door, would the acting editress of Lovely Woman climb with spindly, black-hosened shanks, thrust up the door with slender hand, and pass upward with a final output of strength that taxed her so that she generally entered the loft with a little “poof 17?

Time was when, on these entrances, there would be an excited, timid fluttering, a great agitation of blue wings, concert of little ‘“‘Ohs!” or ejaculations as nearly like the human “ Oh!” as it is possible for homer pigeons to make, a tiny excited or warning grunt in their crops. But nowadays there was little of timidity in the cries that broke out when, about four o’clock, the hatch rose up; little of timidity, much of “‘ Here she comes !’

When Ruth pushed up the trapdoor till it rested against a barrel, set behind the hinges just far enough to allow of the hatch standing open a-tilt, she now found a circle of pigeons round the hatch, came up in the midst of them like some new Venus, latest incarnation, latest, fairest, winnowed by the progressing ages till her name bore a new significance. Gently she lowered the trap-door in place, and then the pigeons waltzed around her, or flew up to her arms, shoulders, head.

She often wondered if anyone in the whole trembling edifice—for when the three-decker in the basement was at work the building did tremble, ever so slightly—beside herself and the caretaker, knew of the existence of these birds. Yet they, too, were servants of the W. D & H. house, received, daily, their rations, and fresh water for drinking, for tubbing ; they had their loft swept out for them, also, every quarter day.

Ruth had discovered the pigeon loft. Everyone who sees something without having it pointed out is a discoverer. She had come up to the attics to consult an old file. She had thus won a censure from Cromarty, for he had seen some very old grey dust upon her brown eolienne skirt, and must needs inquire : ‘‘ What have you been up to, Miss Winter ?”’

She had explained, and been told sternly: “In future you send up a boy for you when you want to consult any of those dusty old files up there.”

She had thanked him; but by no means did she regret her tendency to do instead of to ask ; for 1t was while searching for the file that she had found the loft. A plumber, upon a voyage of discovery in the top flat, had mounted into the pigeon-loft seeking for a lost cistern. Ruth had come forth from the cobwebbed attic, with the dust-laden and crumbling file. It was encircled by her left arm and supported also by her right hand—for it.was The Daily Paper that she wanted to see, and a bound volume of any daily paper is a thing of size and weight.

Then an unexpected whirling caused her to look up, and she saw through the open hatch the bewildered plumber enhaloed by a multitude of wings. She might lack what men call initiative in such matters as the moving of desks, ending of irritations ; but she lacked not the courage to come up again next day to the attic flat, to mount beyond it upon that uncertain ladder, gathering her skirts thoughtfully before the climb, and considering that if she fell, because of the way the ladder was set, she would fall not merely to the floor of the attic flat, but to the bend of the stairs that led to it.

a a ne

Yet did she adventure upwards, filch time that was her employer’s, neglect stern duty, adventure up the ladder, thrust up the trap-door, enter the loft that was to become a kind of sanctuary for her.

Now almost every day she came up thither, to crumble a roll of bread for carriers, horsemen, homers. Here she was wont for about a quarter of an hour to discard reality as ordained by the standards of the W. D. & H. house (their standard ordained again by their public). The sounds of London did not come up so high. Only, if the machines were at work, would there be that faint hum in the walls round the loft. The trap-door was sufficient to still the other hum, the hum of the offices. The merest whisper of * reality ’’ came here, to be heard only when the pigeons sat still. It had almost to be hearkened for, and was so tenuous that it could be drowned out by a homer running his coral beak down the quill feathers of his outstretched wing, or combing the wing’s under side with a stretched claw.

The caretaker, whom she had encountered once on the attic flight, coming down from the loft, had told Ruth that the pigeons there were quite forgotten.

‘“ Nobody thinks of ’em now, bless you, miss,” he said. ‘‘ Telephone and telegram and motors and airyplanes have put ’em out of employment.”

It pleased Ruth, crumbling her roll for them, and hoping she was not staying too long away, to think that no one knew but the caretaker of the pigeons sleepily cooing up here. There was a great sense of rest and security ; it seemed highly unlikely that her sanctuary would ever be invaded.

CHAPTER II: A Rottiine STONE

As for John Brough, upon whose table in a flat of Lincoln’s Inn the white lady of porcelain stood, his life had seemed to be made up of a series of misadventures that ended fortunately.

He was born a few degrees south of the equator in the Gulf of Guinea, off the coast of West Africa, his father being captain of a black tramp ship and his mother the daughter of a missionary who was eaten in Senegambia. The missionary’s daughter had self-sacrificingly married the captain in order to wean him from rum-drinking, and it had been a lost endeavour.

It was a tragic matter. There was a great pathos in her praying to God for aid the while she put in her husband’s grog little powders supplied by a drunkard who had cured himself and advertised, under his photograph—in many journals—“ Does Hubby Booze ? You can Pop my Preparation in his Porter. He will never know.” There was a deeper pathos in the result of her husband’s discovery of her popping the preparation. Hecatechised her. He found that she had been at it for two years ; and he swore by his beard that he had found his grog more than ever palatable during these last two years. Thereafter he wrote in person for the popping powders. Once, off Lagos, feeling very chirpy, he added to his usual request: “They improve the flavour of the grog.”

John’s mother had been a lady of amazing refinement, very sensitive, with a beautiful voice and a far-off gaze. She had taught her son reading, writing, and trained his youthful ears to hearken for the voice of the Lord, so that when he used to have a touch of fever on the Coast, or of bronchitis in Hastings—after his parents came home from the West Coast to live in a little house called ‘“ The Anchorage”’ (his mother had wanted to call it Bethesda, and had lost there too)—he used generally, when lightheaded, to sit up in bed and declaim : * Speak, Lord ! for Thy servant heareth !”’

Regarding a print over his cot, the print of a little boy in a nightgown saying prayers, called ‘“ The Infant Samuel,” he became sceptical. His father taught him, as an antidote to Bible tales, a ballad called ‘‘ Wee Willie Winkie” ; and with the stem of his clay pipe (in which he smoked ship’s tobacco and from which the dottle was never knocked) pointing