Part 10

“Go off out of my dining-rooms,” she ordered. “Don’t you stay here another minute, or else I may use language that I shall be sorry for afterwards, and that you’ll be sorry for afterwards. There’s your hat, hanging up just behind you. Now move, sharp!”

The sleeves of his overcoat, owing to some defect in the lining, were difficult to manage, and this gave him time to protest. He had come, he declared, with no other intention than that of giving patronage to an establishment which he remembered, with affection, in the time of Crowther’s mother, and to enjoy a talk over the past; if, in the course of conversation, he had over-stepped the mark, no one regretted it more acutely than himself. A plain man, accustomed to speaking his mind, he often found that he gave offence where none was intended.

“Jack Blunt they used to call me over at the works,” he added penitently. “Owing to me having the awk’ard trick of always telling the truth!”

Mrs. Crowther so far relented as to call the new girl; she instructed her to attend to the customer the while she herself retired to the back to wash up dishes. Mr. Hards said in a whisper to the attendant: “Don’t seem to have quite pulled it off, first go!” and Ethel, also in an undertone, replied: “Mustn’t get discouraged, uncle. Mother always says it’s your one fault. Unsettle her mind about him, that’s what you’ve got to do.”

He read a newspaper after the meal, and sent to the proprietress a deferential inquiry, asking whether he might be allowed to smoke, and presently hit upon a device for securing another interview.

“Your memory seems not quite what it ought to be,” said Mrs. Crowther, following him to the doorway. “If I were you I’d see a chemist about it.”

“I should have recollected that I hadn’t settled up,” he declared, “just about as I was coming up from the subway at Greenwich.” He found coins. “No,” gazing at a shilling reverently, “mustn’t let you have that one with the hole through it. I was told it would bring me luck. Crowther was wrong for once, but he meant well.”

“Did that really once belong to my dear husband?” she asked, with eagerness. “Oh, do let me look. I’d give almost anything to be allowed to keep it.”

“Kindly accept it, ma’am, as a present from me, and as a kind of apology for the blunder I made just now.”

“I treasure everything he left behind,” said Mrs. Crowther tearfully, “since he went, last December, and I don’t know in the least how to thank you. Drop in any day you’re passing by, and let’s have another quiet chat; I’m never ’appier than when I’m talking about him.”

“My time’s practically my own,” answered Mr. Hards. “Since I retired from over opposite, owing to a slight disagreement years ago, I’ve done a bit of work, book-canvassing, but that don’t take up the entire day. So long!”

A few of the men came into the restaurant, after leaving the works; these were folk who had no expectations of finding tea or supper waiting at home, and they would have stayed on in comfort, gazing admiringly at the young proprietress, only that Mrs. Crowther offered a broad hint by instructing Ethel to find the shutters. They were drifting off, reluctantly, and one was saying to the rest that he would certainly make a dash for it (implying by this that he would make a proposal of marriage) if the lady were not so obviously devoted to a memory, when Mr. Hards appeared at the doorway, heated and exhausted by the effort to arrive before closing-time. With him a shy-looking companion, who had to be taken by the arm because he exhibited inclination to refrain, at the last moment, from entering. “Be a sport,” urged Mr. Hards. The other intimated by his manner that the task was, for him, considerable.

“Looking younger than ever,” declared Mr. Hards effusively. “How are you, ma’am, by this time? Still keeping well? Allow me to introduce you to my friend Ashton.”

“Very pleased,” said Mrs. Crowther with a nod. “What will you gentlemen take—tea or coffee?”

“Don’t suppose,” he remarked still in complimentary tones, “that we shall be able to tell any difference. Ashton, you decide.”

Ashton, looking around, inquired whether the place did not possess a licence; Mrs. Crowther gave the answer, and he said that perhaps coffee would do him as little harm as anything.

“Happened to run across him,” explained Mr. Hards, “and mentioned that I’d met you by chance, ma’am, and he says ‘Not the widow of silly old Millwall Crowther?’ he says. Just like that. Didn’t you, Ashton?”

Mrs. Crowther turned abruptly, and went to furnish the order. “Mind you say ‘yes’ to everything,” ordered Hards privately and strenuously, “or else I’ll make it hot for you.”

The two greeted Mrs. Crowther with frank and open countenances.

“The late lamented,” went on Mr. Hards, with a confidential air, “as you may or may not be aware, used to be in the ’abit of paying attentions to my friend Ashton’s sister.”

“I know all about that,” she remarked curtly. “It was before he met me.”

“And, realising how anxious you was to get hold of everything that once belonged to him, I persuaded him to hop off home and have a search. And lo and behold,” producing a small paper parcel from the inside pocket of his overcoat, “he found this.” Mr. Hards untied the string with deliberation. “There you are!” triumphantly. “_Pearls from the Poets_. And inside, his handwriting.”

“Not sure that I want anything that he gave away to another lady at a time when him and me were not acquainted.”

“The date’ll settle that,” said Hards. “Ashton, your eyes are younger than mine; what do you make of it?”

Ashton recited the entry with an emphasis on the date; Mrs. Crowther grabbed at the book, glanced at the writing, and sat down on the nearest chair, gazing steadily at a ginger-ale advertisement.

“Don’t tell me,” begged Hards distressedly, “that I’ve put my foot into it again. ’Pon my word, if I ain’t the most unlucky chap alive. If I’d had the leastest idea that I was going to be the means of disclosing to you the circumstance that Crowther gave away presents of this kind, and with this sort of remark, after he was married to you, why, I’d sooner—”

She started up with the book, and, selecting the fly-page, placed this between her eyes and the gas-light.

“Some one’s been altering the date,” she said quietly. She threw the volume across. “You gentlemen have got just two minutes and a half before we close for the night. And, as the business is doing pretty well, perhaps you don’t mind if I suggest you never show your faces inside here again.” She went.

“Any objection to me offering you a word of advice, old man?” asked Ashton, on the pavement. “You’re on the wrong tack. When a woman’s made up her mind, the best plan is to agree with her. What you ought to do—”

“Keep quiet,” ordered the other exasperatedly. “Can’t you see I’m thinking?”

They crossed, and walked beside the blank wall of the works.

Ashton was again invited, in plain language, to preserve silence by putting his head in a bag. The lights went out in the restaurant opposite; on the first floor a match was struck and applied to the gas globes; the music of a pianoforte was heard.

“It’s a shame,” declared Hards, throwing out his arms emphatically, “a right-down shame for a nice-looking young woman of her sort to be left alone and neglected. Here she is, able to cook, able to play, very good to look at, and she’s no business to be left by herself.”

“Evidently she don’t want to be left with you.”

“You hop off home,” ordered Hards, “soon as ever you like, and take that book with you, and don’t you ever attempt to interfere again with matters you’ve got no concern in. Otherwise—”

His friend hurried away without taking the opportunity to hear the alternative.

Mr. Hards waited until his niece came out with a letter for the post. A whistle brought her to him from the pillar-box.

“Who was it addressed to?” he demanded. The girl replied that she had omitted to look.

“’Pon my word,” he cried, “I seem to be surrounded by lunatics. Nobody’s got a particle of sense, so far as I can ascertain, excepting myself. No wonder I can’t manage matters as I should like. But, putting all that on one side, what I want now is another interview with her.”

“Judging by what she said after you left, you’re not likely to get it.”

“Look here, my girl. It was your own mother’s suggestion at the start, and she won’t be best pleased if you make yourself a stumbling-block. She, for some reason, seems to have got tired of me living in her house at Greenwich, and it was her idea I should marry well, and settle down somewhere else. Apart from which, I’ve arrived at a time of life when I need a woman’s care and good feeding, and enough money in my pocket to stand treat to friends after they’ve stood treat to me.” He spoke distinctly. “I’m going to knock at that door over there presently, and you’ve got to let me in, and you can stand by and listen whilst I say a few words, and put it all on a proper footing.”

“But she hates the very sight of you.”

“The sort of sensation,” he declared, “that can soon be turned to love.”

Mr. Hards thought it wiser, on finding himself outside the door of the restaurant, to give a sharp double knock. He smiled contentedly on hearing young Mrs. Crowther’s voice call out: “It’s all right, Ethel. Only the postman. I’ll answer him!” She opened the door, and faced him with a look of expectancy that at once vanished.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, taking off his hat, “but I’ve been speaking my mind to that young fellow, and he asked me to call back and apologise on his behalf. I never noticed what he’d been up to, altering that date; it wanted a lady’s sharpness and a lady’s intelligence to detect that. What he wants me to say is he acted on the impulse of the moment.”

“He’d better give up acting altogether,” she remarked. “Did you really know my husband well, or was it all gas?”

“Didn’t I never tell you about that affair poor Crowther and me had with a bobby down near the London Docks one night in November? A fine chap,” went on Hards reminiscently, “if ever there was one. The way he could put up his dooks whenever there was trouble about! I seldom met a fellow who was his equal. He was what I call a manly man. When they told me he’d gone and left you a widow I cried like a child, I did.”

“I was upset at the time,” remarked Mrs. Crowther, “but it soon wore off.”

“It’s often struck me,” he went on, surprised, “that perhaps you didn’t appreciate him at his true value whilst he was alive. Very likely you don’t know, as I know, the way he used to talk about you behind your back.”

“If it was anything like the way he talked in front of my face, I’d rather not hear.”

“Anyway, I daresay, ma’am, you often find yourself looking about for his successor?”

“To tell you the truth, I do.”

He tried to take her hand, but failed.

“I can see him now,” he remarked sentimentally. “We was walking together in Stratford Broadway, and suddenly he turned to me and he says, ‘Ernest,’ he says, ‘something seems to tell me I’m not long for this world. I want you to make me a promise,’ he says. ‘If anything amiss happens to me, I look to you to be a friend to the wife. And if so be,’ he says, with a sort of a kind of a break in his voice, ‘if so be as you should take a fancy to her, and she should take a fancy to you, nothing would give me more pleasure looking down on you both,’ he says, ‘than to—’”

“Bequeathed me to you, did he?”

“It amounts to that, ma’am.”

“All this is news to me,” she remarked. “About what date was it?”

“About what date?” echoed Hards, rubbing his chin. “I can give it you within a very little. It was the night before I met William Humphries, and him and me had a few friendly words about football, and I was in the horspital for three weeks. That was the early part of December. I think it was December you said that poor Crowther drew his last breath. Must have been only a few days—three at the utmost—that he had his talk with me.”

“That seems strange.”

“Strange things do occur in this world.”

“Because Crowther was laid up in his last illness for four months inside this house, and never went outside until the undertaker’s man carried him. And a pretty tidy nuisance he was, too, then, and, in fact, all the time I was married to him. Is that a constable-coming along, or a postman?”

Hards, having ascertained that the approaching man did not represent the law, remained, searching his mind busily. The postman stopped, gave Mrs. Crowther a letter with a foreign postmark, and remarked that the evening was fine.

“His ship will be home here within a fortnight,” she cried excitedly, glancing at the first words of the communication. “Two weeks from to-day.”

“Who?”

“Nobody you know,” said Mrs. Crowther. “And then we shall be married, and I shan’t have to keep the men at the works off by pretending to be so fond of my first. It’s taken a bit of doing. Let me think, now. You want to see Ethel, I expect, don’t you?”

“I don’t want to see no one,” he declared with an emphatic gesture, “no one on this side of the river ever again, so long as I jolly well live!”

XIV—THE REST CURE

“KNEW you’d like it, dear,” said Mr. Gleeson confidently. “I declared the moment I saw the place, ‘Now this,’ I said to myself, ‘this will suit the dear wife down to the ground.’ Just look at that bit over there. (Wait a moment, driver.) Isn’t that simply—”

He gave a gesture which meant that the English language provided no adequate words. His wife, with one hand upon his shoulder, offered an “Ah!” of content.

“You must paint this,” he went on, recovering powers of speech. “You must bring your easel and your white umbrella some morning when I’m busy, and try to get this effect. See the top of the church spire above the trees?”

“That there’s a oast house,” interrupted the driver.

“You will not forget that I shall have my duties in the village,” she reminded him. “We are going to make life brighter, you know, for everybody.”

“True!” he admitted. “It will require discretion.”

“And diplomacy.”

“Still, we’re not exactly amateurs. We bring something like a ripe experience to the task. This will be child’s play after London. Think of the difference in numbers. Driver, how many inhabitants are there in Murford Green?”

“Can’t say as I ever counted ’em.”

“But speaking approximately.”

“Well,” said the driver, with deliberation, “speaking approximately, I should say they was no better than they ought to be. And you’ll excuse me, but I’ve got to get back to meet the five-eight, and if you and your lady could give me what you may call permission to go on now without any more pulling up, I shall jest do it. Otherwise I shan’t, and then Miss Bulwer won’t let me never hear the last of it. That’s what she won’t!”

“Who is Miss Bulwer?”

“Look ’ere,” argued the driver, half turning in his seat. “I’ve answered a pretty tidy number of questions sence we started from the railway station, and I’m beginning to lose my voice, and I’m not far off from losing my temper. But in reference to your question concerning, or regarding, or affecting Miss Bulwer, my answer is, you’ll jolly soon find out! Is that good enough for you, or isn’t it?”

“Merely a surface manner,” explained Mr. Gleeson, as the open fly trundled on again. “You don’t know these people, my dear. A certain veneer of brusqueness, but underneath that good pure gold. Simple natures, I admit, but as honest and straightforward—Wonder,” dropping his voice, “wonder how much he expects for this journey?”

“Pay him well,” suggested young Mrs. Gleeson, also in a whisper. “We must make a good impression at the start. Say eighteen-pence.”

“Fortunately,” resuming ordinary tones, “both you and I will be protected and saved by our keen sense of humour.” He smiled. “I expect our arrival will flutter Murford Green pretty considerably. On an even surface the slightest ripple shows.”

Both stood up in the open carriage on finding that the prophecy seemed to receive full justification. Twenty or thirty men and lads were rushing across the triangle of green, shouting wildly; in their hands they carried stout hammers and long-handled axes; women cheered from doorways of cottages. A few were distracted temporarily by sight of the station fly, but, reproved by the others, they went on, atoning for the slight delay by shrieking more loudly than the rest.

“Anything on, driver?”

“Something coming off,” answered the man. “I said what’d ’appen when people began to lock up gates that’d been open for gen’rations and gen’rations. I warned ’em, but they wouldn’t take no notice. And I ain’t of’en wrong, neither,” concluded the driver.

“Don’t be frightened, dear,” urged Mr. Gleeson. “I’ll go out presently and set it to rights. One wise word from an impartial person, and it will all be over.”

The driver said at the destination that, times without number, he had received three and six for the service, paid willingly; if the gentleman had no more silver he supposed he would have to be content with three shillings. In reply to contentions, the driver asked whether Mr. Gleeson was aware of the price being asked, at the present moment, for oats, and Mr. Gleeson having to admit that his knowledge on this subject was incomplete, the driver retorted, “Very well then, what’s the use of arguing? Why not pay up and look pleasant over it?” The fare obeyed the first part of this recommendation. The two maids (sent on in advance from Kensington) stood inside the gate, and caught the driver’s farewell remark.

“Really, ma’am,” said the elder primly, “the manners of these people! I thought I knew something about language, but I’ve learnt something the three days we’ve been down here. Had a pleasant journey? Me and Sarah have both been feeling humpish. I told her it would be all right soon as ever you and the master came.”

Mr. Gleeson set out, immediately after a meal, to arrange the question that was troubling Murford Green. He had changed into a Norfolk suit, and as a further concession smoked a briar pipe; with a thick walking-stick he prodded at dock-leaves on the green. Near one corner of the triangle a meeting was being held, with a large-faced man shouting excitedly from a Windsor chair. Mr. Gleeson, crossing over, added himself to the audience.

“Well spoke,” sang the crowd, as the large man appeared to finish. “Very well putt!”

“There’s my shop ’cross there,” shouted the orator, pointing to windows that had “Crutchley, Butcher,” in marble letters overhead. “If any one thinks I’ve broke the law, that’s where they can serve a summons.”

The crowd looked around at the village constable. The constable frowned with the air of a man who had not entirely succeeded in making up his mind.

“We’ve got our rights,” the butcher went on, “and I defy any one to say the contrairy. If there’s anybody here who don’t agree with me, now’s the time for him to step up and express his opinion. Free speech is our motto and— What name, please?”

“My name is Gleeson,” announced the newcomer, “and I should like to say a few words.”

“For the agitation, may I ask, or against?”

“My attitude,” said Mr. Gleeson, “is that of a peace-maker.”

The crowd grumbled; the butcher called for order. Mr. Gleeson ascended the chair.

When, at the end of ten minutes, he stepped down, only the constable was there to give him a hand. The constable accounted for the dispersal of the crowd by pointing out that supper time was near, and on Mr. Gleeson asking whether he thought the words spoken had produced any effect, replied, cautiously, that it was difficult to say. The constable, as one who had looked on at many struggles, gave the opinion that you could not do better than let the parties fight it out and, this done, then possibly, but not certainly, came the moment for you to interfere. Mr. Gleeson felt bound, in reply, to mention that he had in his time been called to the bar; intimated that, in circumstances such as these, it seemed more fitting that he should give advice than take it.

“Now,” admitted the constable, “now you’re putting a different light, sir, on the matter. To tell the truth, I wasn’t quite aweer who I was talking to. I look on your arrival here, sir, as particular fortunate, because you can back me up in any action I see fit to take.”

“Any correct action.”

“That’s the only way I’ve got of doing things. I’ve never yet made a blunder, and I don’t suppose now I ever shall.”

“We are all of us liable to err,” pointed out Mr. Gleeson.

“Being liable to do a thing,” retorted the constable judicially, “and actually doing it, is two entirely different matters. Shall I tell you, sir, what idea has just come into my head?”

Permission given.

“This is the way I get ’old of notions,” went on the other self-exultantly. “I may be walking along a quiet lane, or standing here, as I am now, and all at once they come into my noddle like a—well, more like a flash of lightning than anything else. It’s won’erful. Gives me quite a turn for the moment. Guess what the notion is that I’ve just thought of.”

The gentleman from London excused himself from making the attempt, and found his arm hooked confidentially by the handle of the policeman’s stick.

“I’ll bring over to your ’ouse this very evening two of the leaders of this movement, or agitation, or whatever you like to call it. You take down their evidence and to-morrow you go and call on Miss Bulwer. She’s the lady who’s been trying to stop up this path. You talk it over with her, you do, and settle it, and then announce your decision. As easy,” concluded the policeman, detecting hesitation, “as easy as saying the A.B.C.”

Two days later the constable, on receiving news from Crutchley, Butcher, that the affair had been amicably settled, was able to state that the village could reckon itself once more in debt to him, and mentioned the case of a colleague at Middlesham who had recently been presented by grateful inhabitants with a bicycle. Later came information that Miss Bulwer had discharged her housemaid, with a month’s wages in lieu of notice; the driver of the station fly, in the course of a chat with his fare, ascertained the cause for her dismissal was that Miss Bulwer had understood her (the housemaid) to say, before the Londoner’s call, that she believed Mr. Gleeson was a bachelor, whereas the departing housemaid declared she had only mentioned that he was clean-shaven. All the same the decision of the arbitrator stood; Miss Bulwer was declared to be the owner of the right of way, but graciously permitted the inhabitants to use it. Few of the villagers had walked along the path before the locked gate was placed there, and no one showed any anxiety to do so now that it was thrown open.

“A most satisfactory beginning,” said Mr. Gleeson to his young wife. “Nothing could be more auspicious. Now, we are about to take up the task of breaking down some barriers on our own account. Your help, dear, will be specially needed.”

“I haven’t your tact.”

“You have something better, my love,” he replied gallantly. “You have charm. Together we ought to do a great work.”

“The place is beautifully quiet now,” she remarked.

“‘If there’s peace to be found in the world,’” quoted Mr. Gleeson, “‘a heart that is humble may hope for it here.’”

“The girls are complaining.”

“They will soon become accustomed to the village and its surroundings. It takes time for a Londoner to settle down. The silence,” he went on, going to the window, “is to me most impressive.”

“It appears to strike them as being dull.”