Part 2

Clara Citron gave me a stony glance, and Orion stared at me entreatingly. He seemed afraid of offending her; he was afraid of everything and everyone.

“I don’t know how we are going to get her downstairs,” the business-like little woman said. “It is such an awkward turn on the landing. We could lower her out of the window, but there is such a crowd.”

She peeped through the brown wire blind before she hurried away. Orion poured himself out a second glass of that deplorable port directly the door was shut on her and he dared. Every time there was a scrooping sound overhead he shook from head to foot. It seemed a long time before we heard the cautious, thumping tread of men bearing a heavy load. At the ominous resting of those feet we both knew, although we said nothing, although we did not even look at each other, that they were maneuvering the turn at the landing. We both drew a breath of relief when the steady stumping went on again, came nearer, passed the door, went down the steps. A faint murmur floated up from the crowd. Orion had his third glass of port.

Clara Citron came in, a little flushed and triumphant. She poured out more wine in clean glasses, cut more cake, and beckoned the men in. When they were ready she coaxed on new black kid gloves.

“Come on,” she said to us. “We are late as it is. Such a squeeze with that coffin at the head of the stairs! She was a fine woman. I want, if I can, to catch a late train back to Southsea. There are my lodgers to look after. I’ve only left the girl in charge.”

“Do you keep a lodging house?” Orion asked mechanically, snatching up his hat with the deep black band.

“Yes,” she said shortly; “I must do something.”

We all three wedged into the passage. Orion was last. Clara Citron marched out, a compact, trim figure in cheap black, between the thin line of sickly London faces. She wore a solemn, festival sort of air. I followed, feeling very awkward and uncomfortable in the frock-coat I had borrowed from Wood: he got it out of pawn for the occasion. I never owned a frock coat in my life, and hope I never shall. It is one of those respectable, stultifying possessions that I refrain from on principle.

I looked back for Orion. He was wavering on the step, as if he felt afraid to walk between those lines of white faces which stretched from the door to the coach. Then I saw him give a hasty look into the house, at the passage, the stairs, muddy with so many feet. Then he seemed to come headlong to the coach. I thought he had slipped on something. He jumped in and banged the door furiously. The crowd gave a soft, sympathetic “boo” at the sight of his ghastly face. Clara Citron, who held a new handkerchief with a very wide border to her dry eyes, looked over the hem.

That terrible long drive to Finchley! That shimmering line of faces all the way! I went to Jimmy’s funeral, I went to Chaytor’s, and I went to Mrs. Grigg’s--under protest. I will never go to another, unless it is my own--that will be unavoidable.

The Great Ormond Street murder made a tremendous sensation. I think Clara Citron thoroughly enjoyed herself. She seemed to regard the crowd in the light of a personal ovation.

Did I tell you that it was May?--a wet, warm May morning. At Finchley, away from the houses, the rain seemed to fall more softly. In the cemetery all sorts of pink and white and purple bushes were in bloom. They reminded me of my childhood; I was born in the country. The great, intensely green stretches of grass were hideously humped with graves. The soft, rushing rain seemed to make them greener every moment.

I forgot to mention that Clara Citron coolly took the whole of the seat facing the horses. It was the best position for seeing the people, and it allowed the people to have a good view of her. She spread her skirt out carefully and kept the handkerchief to her eyes, peering furtively all the time. Orion and I sat as far back as we could on the cushions--those dusty, pluffy cushions which reeked of a thousand stale griefs. We tried to get beyond the range of those gimlet-like eyes which pointed in their hundreds, from the pavements. Once Orion said, in a queer, strained voice:

“For God’s sake let me get out and walk.”

A moment later, before Clara Citron could make any scandalized protest, he bent forward, pounced forward, in a quick, cunning way, as you would on an animal you wished to catch, and brought his hand down heavily on the cushions of the opposite seat. A cloud of dust rose up and choked our companion. When she had done spluttering, she asked him angrily why on earth he did it. He didn’t answer. He only sat and stared, with dazed eyes, at the seat where she sat. Once he moaned and shivered. He was not looking at Clara Citron. He was looking past her, through her. He was like an imbecile. But what could one expect of a man who had drunk whisky as if it had been water for a week, and had wound up with funeral port from the grocer’s?

The service was a trial to everyone but Clara Citron. She reveled in the crowd. I was never in such a rage in my life. Every slatternly woman was pointing and whispering. Orion’s face was clammy and yellow, like the clay into which they lowered Mrs. Grigg. I watched them drop earth onto her coffin; watched them put away for ever that leer of hers, those old coquetries.

When everything was over we went quickly across the sodden, exquisitely green turf to the gravel. The crowd seemed to melt away; softly, with a gentle rustle, like the gurgling May rain. We were almost alone.

A warm, wet day in spring is perfect. The rain came finer and thicker every moment. It made a mysterious veil of gauze which dropped over the graveyard.

Halfway down the path Orion clutched my arm. It was the despairing mad clutch of a doomed man. He clutched my arm and looked hurriedly behind him.

We had reached the coach. The undertaker’s men climbed to their box with an air of business. Some sat on the roof of the hearse, their legs dangling jovially.

“We shall get back faster than we came,” Clara Citron said, getting in and looking round, half in disappointment, because there was no longer such a crowd. “I’m dying for a cup of tea.”

Orion leaped in and rattled to the door. I was beginning to be really anxious about him. We started off at a brisk trot, but the iron gates of the cemetery were hardly out of sight before he stumbled up with a fearful cry. The cemetery, I say, was hardly out of sight; we might still have seen the grave which held Mrs. Grigg and the mystery of her death. He gave that cry and put out his trembling hands to the door.

He saw what we could not see. He saw the door of the coach open easily, and saw the fourth mourner come in. She brushed by him silently--the one in red--to the vacant seat.

“I can’t stay. I tell you I won’t stay,” he shrieked, and the sharp rattle of wheels and hoofs dulled the agony in his voice. “Don’t you see her on the seat?”--he was speaking to Clara Citron. “She has hardly left you room to sit. Those confounded crinolines take up so much room.”

The lodging-house keeper gripped him firmly by the wrists, and forced him back to his seat. Her hands were strong with years of housework.

“I’m used to this sort of thing,” she said aside to me; “my first-floor lodger has had D. T. twice. My lady in the parlors takes her drop. Her husband pays me well to look after her--but they get it at the grocer’s as soap or candles, at the confectioner’s and call it tea, at the draper’s when they go shopping, and have it put on the bill as extras.”

Orion rambled on.

“She is sitting next you. She followed us out of the house. I saw her come down the stairs. She rode with us all the way. She stood by her own grave--followed her own funeral. She looked across and grinned at me, the old witch, when they threw earth on the coffin. She has followed us back. She jostled me just now on the cemetery path, d----n her! She’d have had me down if I hadn’t caught hold of Groome. She wanted to seal me up in that dirty yellow grave, as we tried to seal her. But I could bear it. I wasn’t going to let her frighten me. I bore everything until she came away from her own grave--then I knew it was all up with me. She is filling the coach. Can’t you see her red dress puffing out? I never saw a woman swell so. The red dress, Groome; the dress she wore at dinner on Sunday week! The one she always wore in the evening, the one she died in. Oh! can’t you two see her? Can’t you turn her out? The coach is all growing red.”

“Do you mean Mrs. Grigg?” Clara Citron asked crisply. “I can’t see anything.” She bounced to the other side as if to convince him. “But then,” she added significantly, “I didn’t murder her.”

“You see, I did,” Orion returned with a foolish smile and the tremendous simple relief of a child who gets something off his mind.

He did not seem to realize what the admission involved. He was evidently indifferent to everything but the one in red; the dead old woman in the blood-colored gown, who was slowly, slowly, but very surely, filling up the coach.

“I got so tired of waiting,” he continued in a confidential way, and we both bent close to catch every word, closing him in, as it seemed.

“She wouldn’t part with a penny and she wouldn’t die,” he went on piteously. “What are you to do with a woman like that? I was on my beam ends. It is all the accursed City. I was afraid of getting out of a berth. When you get out of a berth you’re done. I’ve been with the same firm fifteen years, and yet they were going to turn me off like a dog--the bookkeeper told me so.”

He was laying himself quite bare. He dropped the flimsy lie of his daily life. He did not hold to the junior-partner fiction any longer.

“It was very easy,” he added, with a certain workman-like pride in the affair. “I knew when the servant went out marketing; knew how long she’d be, and where she hid the street-door key--on a ledge near the coal cellar by the area steps. It was the easiest matter in the world. The old woman--keep her back, can’t you? She doesn’t want to hear--she knows. She was stooping over the fire--weren’t you? She had been cutting up meat; the stew was on the hob and the carving knife was on the table. I gave her one certain blow. She gave me one look--I might have known what that look meant.

“But I did it beautifully. I went back to my rooms and washed my hands and changed my cuffs, so as to be sure,” he sniggered. “I had only just finished when the servant came round. It was a close shave. And then I went and told Groome. No one need ever have known. But you can’t fight with a woman who comes out of her grave!

“She takes up so much room that I can’t breathe. Let her out, shove her into the road. She’ll never be able to catch us up. Let the wheels go over her.”

Clara Citron, who had held his wrists firmly all the time, dropped them and cautiously opened the door of the coach a very little way. I twitched her skirt.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to tell them to drive to the Old Bailey--that’s Newgate, isn’t it?” she returned viciously. Evidently she owed Orion some deep grudge.

“Pooh! We don’t do it that way. Sit down. Take up all the seat--try to convince him, to keep him quiet. I’ll look after him to-night.”

She sat down looking slightly sulky.

“I trust you to look after my interests,” she said plaintively, after a pause. “I’m a hard-working woman and all the money was on my side of the family. Here’s my card.” She pulled out a thickly-lettered squab of cardboard. “‘Citron, The Parade, Southsea.’ If you ever want a blow of sea air, I can always let you have bed and breakfast on reasonable terms.”

The coach swung merrily on. I rather fancy that the men on the box were singing. Orion kept on saying piteously that Mrs. Grigg, in the red dress, was taking up all the room--more and more room--that she was slowly strangling him. In this fashion we rattled back to Bloomsbury, where it was getting dusk and where rain fell more heavily than it had done in the morning.

I watched him all that night. In the morning the sun came fiercely in. The hot, golden air seemed all Sunday frocks, church bells, and the weighty caw of rooks.

There was a pane of glass above Orion’s bedroom door. He said, quite quietly,--it was the first time he had spoken:

“She keeps on looking through that glass. There’s a confounded red bonnet on her head now--never knew such a woman for red. Can’t you do something? Can’t you rig up a curtain, old chap?”

There was a crafty look on his silly face. I remembered that afterward. I turned aside to find something, and the next thing I knew was a “ploomp” on the stones underneath and a loud, ringing shriek.

Orion had flung himself out. It was really the best finish he could have made. Adeline saw him do it and shrieked. She was standing at Murphy’s window; Orion, in his fluttering shirt, dropped past her startled eyes. I must tell you Adeline’s story some day.

The money? That was the one funny touch in the whole affair. Mrs. Grigg actually left the house and every penny she had in the world to the man who brought her round two hundredweight of coal once a week, from the greengrocer’s shop in Red Lion Street. He was a handsome sort of chap--that seemed the only reason. He sold the house. I heard the other day that he was drinking himself to death.

Clara Citron? She went back to the lodging-house at Southsea; is there now, I suppose. But she was one of those women without attributes; not the sort of person you would have the least interest in investigating.

Hard on Orion, wasn’t it? Quite superfluous, you see. I never liked him. Yet, looking back, I’m sorry for the mean little humbug. That cursed City grinds men down to any pettiness. I’d rather starve in Piccadilly than eat turtle in an Alderman’s robe at Guildhall.

ARNOLD’S LAUNDRESS.

THE laundress, as an institution, is dying out. Men are getting particular about their rooms; one across the way, that set where the cork window-boxes are, bought a feather broom last week. There is a very reprehensible feeling of respectability and decorum about. Most of the fellows have smart young women to clean their rooms. I see them tripping gingerly across the square in the mornings, with loose cotton blouses, curly hair, and artificial flowers in their big hats.

But the good old laundress, all fat and dirt and impudence, contents me. She has a draggled skirt with a deep hem of dried mud, a flat pancake of a bonnet, all melancholy jet and brown ribbon that once was black. She wobbles when she moves; she is a half-set jelly in a greasy bag. I like her; to me she recalls my youth, the old wild days when I and the others were young. With a few exceptions she is only employed to clean offices now.

She is a professional woman. For many years the care of certain sets descended quite naturally from mother to daughter. They were pocket boroughs--hereditary pickings. The tenant was a mere incident, to be borne with up to a certain point.

I remember that Arnold was always squabbling with his laundress. He was an assertive little chap, and understood nothing in the world but dogs. He had no sense of humor; resented Mrs. Neaves and asked me to mediate. I suggested an apology.

Mrs. Neaves was blue-eyed. She had a singularly flat, red nose.

“Me apologize to the likes of ’im!” she cried out in a pained voice. “Me! As ’ave cleaned that set for years. Why, I treats ’im worse than the dirt under my feet. Do you know what he did? ’E threatened to punch my nose.”

“Come, come! Did he do it?”

“Did ’e do it! It ’ud a bin Gawd ’elp ’im if ’e ’ad. I’d a summonsed ’im,” she cried as she flounced off.

After this Arnold went through many vicissitudes; a new laundress every week. He was like a woman; took these things to heart. I shall never forget how pleased he was when he came to tell me that he’d got a treasure at last.

She was very smart; a rather supercilious young married woman, with long earrings and a pert, white face. She came to the Inn wearing black kid gloves and a silver locket and chain; she carried a little reticule with her apron rolled up tightly inside. Things went very well for a week. She kept the place spotless. But when Arnold paid her on Saturday afternoon, she asked him civilly to “suit himself.”

“The work’s far too heavy,” she said mincingly, “and the rooms is invested with beadles to an awful extent. It’s not as if I was obliged to work, you see, sir. I only do it to occupy my time--not having any children--and to help pay back the money my husband’s mother lent him. There’s no hurry for that. She’s in a good position. Got her own laundry, paid seven hundred down for it. My husband was in the army, and she bought him out before we were married. I couldn’t think of marrying a soldier--all the refuge goes into the army. If only you could get a girl to come in and do the rough work for a hour every morning, my husband wouldn’t object to me obliging you.”

“What’s a man to do?” Arnold asked dejectedly of me in the evening. “I’m half inclined to chuck the Inn and go back to diggings; the Common was good for the dog to run on. But then there’s the landlady--she always objects to dogs. And some of them have principles--I call all principle prejudice--about the latch key.”

“You’d better take back Mrs. Neaves. Give her a shilling a week more; that’s all she was trying for. You’d save in the end. How many have you had altogether?”

He began to count on his fingers.

“There was Stubbs. She was right enough, but it makes me sick to look at a scarecrow. And old mother Morey who always turned up with bruises on Monday morning. And Mrs.--What’s-her-name--the woman who brought a perambulator full of babies. By the way, have you heard about Wood? He’s frightfully down on his luck. The last thing he did was to steal the landlady’s perambulator. When he got to the pawnbroker’s the blessed thing wouldn’t go through the door, so he had to wheel it back. And the Cox woman--oh! I forget their confounded names. They are all alike. Stay as long as it suits them. Rob you right and left. They take their money some Saturday and you never see them again. If they can swindle you out of sixpence or a shilling by pretending to have no change, but promising to bring it on Monday, they will. The last one--before this woman--had me that way. I was fool enough to give her half a sovereign. That was four bob to the bad, for her money was only six. Said she lived in Hand Court, over the old clothes shop. I’ve been down there and no one has ever heard of her. I went with Wood. He was going to sell some old trousers, but they only offered eighteenpence for two pairs, so he’s pawned them and sold the ticket--it’s a much better plan.

“There was the woman Sol flew at. He is the gentlest dog in the whole world. But you mustn’t shake your fist at a deerhound; it puts their blood up sooner than anything. I warned her, but she would do it. The husband came round half drunk and bullied. I gave him five shillings to get rid of him. They all object to the dog. It was because of the dog that I left my lodgings in Wilkinson Street, Tooting. And I’d rather throw stones at my grandmother than part with Sol. He saved my life. Did I ever tell you? It was when I was on a walking tour. I was alone on Dartmoor, except for Sol----”

“You’ve told me lots of times. Now, take my advice and have Mrs. Neaves back. She wasn’t a bad sort.”

“She was very kind to Sol; used to bring him an apron full of bones,” he said reflectively.

When he said that, I knew the thing was settled and that Mrs. Neaves would be reinstated. He was devoted to Sol, who was a beautiful, pure-bred deerhound, with the long, melancholy face and almost human eyes which these dogs have.

Poor Arnold! I don’t know what has become of him. But I can make a good guess. He’s living somewhere in the suburbs, very near the Common--for Sol’s sake. He was a dapper little fellow. One of those men with a rather big head, neat calves, and a chain with a big seal. He wore loud check suits--four checks to the suit--when he went away on a holiday, and when he was at home he had an incorrigible habit of wasting his time at bars and chaffing the barmaid. That is nothing; every man is bachelor to the barmaid. But it led Arnold into complications.

Clarissa was an extraordinarily pretty girl. She had blue eyes set very far apart, and a striking profile. With her loose knot of hair, her delicate nose, and her short upper lip, she looked like a cameo--one of those pure, classic faces which middle-aged ladies used to wear in a brooch. Of course she was powdered, and she laced tightly and puffed her lovely hair out into one of those exaggerated erections which is the professional headgear of the barmaid. You never see such an arrangement anywhere else; perhaps the management provides it. But she was very lovely and demure. Also, she had the sense to be silent: an unusually pretty woman should never talk.

Arnold, who dropped into the “Worcester Arms” nightly, began to regard her as a woman--not merely a barmaid. Men sometimes talk dubiously to the barmaid, and she--figuratively speaking--ducks her head and lets the stream of insinuation flow over her. She is never affronted; takes it as a matter of course; customers pay for this privilege with their drinks.

Clarissa was lonely. She lived in a barracks somewhere off Greek Street, clubbing together with a lot of other young women. She never spoke of her relations. Arnold assumed that she was like so many other girls, alone in London--to sink or swim, according to her luck. He took her out and gave her harmless little treats whenever she could get away from the bar. But he never asked her to his rooms. He had a sort of reverence for her. He didn’t wish to compromise her, and he took to glaring fiercely at any harmless simpleton who strolled into the “Worcester Arms” and chaffed Clarissa in the usual way.

He introduced her to Sol, telling her how the dog had saved his life on Dartmoor and adding that nothing on this earth would induce him to part with the animal.

“He’s a pure-bred blue deerhound,” he wound up enthusiastically. “I’ve got his pedigree for seven generations.”

Clarissa said “really” in her demure way, and she stroked the thing’s wiry coat and said what beautiful eyes he had, and that she supposed he must be worth a lot of money.

“Twenty pounds--I’ve been offered that,” Arnold told her concisely. “It was a fellow who shows these dogs. He’s got a whole kennel of them at his place in the country. I went down there; you never saw a more beautiful sight.”

“Twenty pounds!” said Clarissa, drawing in her breath softly.

Things went on for a month or two. Then Arnold became more infatuated than ever. He asked Clarissa to marry him. Of course she jumped at it. The great ambition of these girls is to marry a gentleman. And Arnold would pass--with a barmaid. He was fairly well off, too, making, so he said, about six hundred a year on the Stock Exchange; it is always these stupid men who make money. It was a catch for Clarissa.

He took her away from the “Worcester Arms” and boarded her out with a decayed widowed lady at Clapham. He made an arrangement for Sol to board there too, and Clarissa promised to take the dog for long rambles on the Common while his master was in the City.