Part 4

Also, they gave him sound advice in regard to keeping well in with the governor: a dinner was arranged at a club to which one of them belonged, and, at the expense of Ernest, Mr. Rollinson was entertained, and made much of; Wilner (who had been twice through the Bankruptcy Court, using up several pails of whitewash and coming out not quite clean)—Wilner made a speech, proposing old Rollinson’s health, declaring that their guest was one of the bulwarks of the nation, and that his well-equipped son would, later on, when he had finished looking about, become one of the foremost men in the State. Privately, Wilner told Mr. Rollinson that all our best politicians had sown their wild oats in early days, and gave an amusing and little-known anecdote concerning a member of the Cabinet.

“What he wants,” said old Rollinson, glancing at his son, “is concentration, if you know what it means, sir.”

“That will grow on him,” remarked the other lightly. “All he has to do just now is to make plenty of friends. And it isn’t for a mere amateur like myself to give advice to an experienced man of the world like George Rollinson—”

Oddly enough, the term had never before been applied to him. Old Rollinson fixed his cigar at a more rakish angle.

“But if I were you, I should see that, for a year or two at any rate, he was not stinted of money.” Wilner gazed reflectively at his glass of claret. “I’ve seen so many youngsters, fine, promising, delightful lads, go to the deuce just for want of a few paltry hundreds. And you needn’t begrudge it, you know. By all accounts you make it easily enough.”

The rest of the dinner-party, once they had, as Wilner neatly phrased it, put off the old man, went to the Argyll Rooms, and later to Bob Croft’s in the Haymarket (no use in going to Croft’s until midnight), where Ernest insisted upon playing the harp, with the aid of his walking-stick; when the police came to make their usual nightly round, Ernest demanded the company of the Inspector in the Varsoviana. Wilner and the others were satisfied with the efforts of their pupil and allowed him, at his special request, to pay for everything. This was the occasion when Ernest lighted a cigar with one of the notes given to him by his father, and found some difficulty in making the paper burn.

There were times when Ernest, troubled with remorse and a severe headache, spoke of giving it all up, and returning to Bloomsbury Square; the bodyguard had to use their best powers of derision. An accusation of want of pluck generally proved effective; later, a slip of the pen on the part of Ernest gave them a better hold, and they had only to draw his attention to the punishment awarded by the law for forgery. Old Rollinson fell ill, in consequence of a chill sustained on the steamboat returning from Greenwich after his new doctor had ordered him a sea voyage, and the remittances stopped. A new and promising-looking pigeon flew into the district of the Circus; Wilner and his colleagues dropped the acquaintance of Ernest, who could find no better companion than a wise young housemaid at Jermyn Street. The girl gave him good advice and went with him to Bloomsbury Square, waiting at the railings whilst he entered to see his father, to make frank avowals, and to impersonate the prodigal son. He came out in less than half an hour, and it seemed at once evident that the fatted calf was still alive.

“Says I’ve disappointed him,” reported Ernest tearfully, “and that he never wants to see me again. Declares he did his best for me, and all I’ve done has been to spend nearly every penny he gained, and there’s nothing to show for it, excepting a good-for-nothing, broken-down young man. And mother agreed with him.”

“Appears to me,” remarked Helen, “some one is going to have the responsibility of looking after you.”

“I wish you’d marry me.”

“That will be about the best plan,” she agreed.

Ernest Rollinson died in ’64, and soon after the old people went. Young Mrs. Rollinson, putting her baby boy away with some working people in Clerkenwell, entered service again.

A Home for Indigent Bookmakers found itself benefited by the terms of the Bloomsbury Square will; nothing was left to the son’s family, in spite of the device used in christening the baby. Helen worked hard in her good situation and saved money, paying the folk in Corporation Lane weekly, and now and again snatching an hour off to see her boy. She was there one afternoon in December watching with amusement his celebrated impersonation of a policeman on the track of a Fenian (he had some new piece of cleverness each time she paid her furtive visits) when a tremendous clatter came from the wall of the prison opposite, the house trembled, plaster of the ceiling fell in a thick white shower, and then the place collapsed. Helen Rollinson found herself pulled out of the débris and screamed loudly for her George; they brought to her a maimed child, and she, almost demented, was nursing the poor thing in the confusion of the street, and begging it not to die, when Master George himself trotted up, safe and sound, demanding of his mother whether she had noticed the splendid fireworks. She placed the injured child in the hands of one of the doctors, heard that the woman of the house was not expected to recover, and rushed away with her boy from the disastrous scene.

“Well for you, Helen,” said her excellent mistress, “that you are able to show me your marriage lines, otherwise it would be my duty, as a strict Churchwoman, to turn you out of the house, neck and crop. As it is, you have practised deceit on me, and I am afraid we must look upon this dreadful affair at Clerkenwell as a judgment for your sin.”

“They seemed to suspect some Irish people, ma’am.”

“Heaven has its own way of punishing evil-doers,” declared the lady, “and it isn’t for us to question its methods. You cannot stay here any longer.”

“I must find another situation, I s’pose, ma’am. But I shan’t get such a good one as this.”

“Deceit,” insisted the other, “is one of the things that must, on no account, be encouraged. What is your boy like?”

The child, brought from the kitchen, repeated for the benefit of Helen’s mistress his account of the explosion, a performance that had been well received downstairs. The lady was impressed.

“A clever boy,” she said. “Would you like me to adopt him, Helen, and thus leave you free?”

“I’d rather starve than let him go away from me again.”

“Supposing, then,” said the lady, getting over her surprise at this attitude, “supposing I set you up in a small business of some kind; will you promise me never to be deceitful again?” Helen gave the required guarantee, and her mistress put the small boy through a viva-voce examination; his replies concerning the award meted out to naughty people fortunately coincided exactly with the lady’s own views.

Helen Rollinson, widow of Ernest Rollinson, and mother of George Rollinson, saw her name painted over a shop in Southampton Row, with the words added, on either side of the main inscription, “Newsagent” and “Tobacconist”; she let the rooms above, giving some personal attendance, used the apartment at the back of the shop as a living-room whence she could see when a customer entered, occupied spare moments by making clothes for George, preparing necessary meals, and telling him to be a good lad. She slept for about six hours every night, giving the remaining eighteen to hard work, and to the considerable task of minding her own business. Mr. Forster carried his Education Act just in time to enable George to take advantage of it, and the boy was one of the earliest to pay sixpence a week and become a pupil of the State at a superior school; in his spare time he delivered newspapers and ran errands, sometimes going so far as the City and making use of the new Viaduct at Holborn; he was at first terrified by these important missions, but overhearing his mother speak of him to a customer as a boy who knew his way about, he determined to keep his fears to himself, and to overcome them. Moreover, there was the knowledge that undertakings of the kind, perilous as they might be, saved expense. Mrs. Rollinson watched every penny, every halfpenny, and spoke with genuine regret when disbursements had to be made to the Parcels Delivery Company.

“Throwing away good money!” she declared.

She explained to George, in answer to his question, a theory she held in regard to the coinage of the United Kingdom, and he embodied these views in an essay at school the following morning. His teacher, greatly diverted, read the paper aloud to the class, and the boys followed the lead, glad of an excuse for boisterous amusement. George flushed, and kept his head down. It gives some notion of the difficulties experienced by the State in its early days of keeping school when I mention that George ranged himself on the side of his parent, and declined to accept the opinions of educational authorities; the teacher, noting his attitude, spoke to him later in the playground, and assured him again that his argument was based upon error. Money, said the teacher, was manufactured at a place called the Mint situated east of the City; the gold coins were actual value, whilst the rest were called tokens, representing a value only by agreement. Notes were made on special paper, and printed under the supervision of the Bank of England. To write, as George Rollinson had done, that there were two kinds of money, one dry and the other slippery, one easy to retain and the other impossible to keep, was to make an assertion that, in the light of facts, could not possibly be supported.

“So get that nonsensical idea out of your head, my lad,” advised his teacher earnestly, “as soon as you possibly can. You have a good deal to learn yet, remember.”

On most subjects George accepted the instructions of the representatives of the State, bringing home to Southampton Row items of geographical information and snips of historical news; his mother nodded approvingly and hinted that all the particulars had once been learnt by her, but, owing to pressure of other matters, forgotten. When the boy asked about his father she constructed for his encouragement, and her own content, an ideal man, dogged, wise, and industrious, never wasting a moment of valuable time, always thrifty. Upon George inquiring why, in these circumstances, they had not been left more comfortably off, she fell back on her old theory regarding cash, and told him in conclusion that little boys who did not ask too many questions would find their appropriate reward in not being told too many lies.

The profits of the business were small, but they were sure. The newspaper and magazine side increased slightly year by year with nothing in the nature of a set-back, excepting the occasional defalcation of some customer with a poor memory, and lightly furnished in the way of luggage. Mrs. Rollinson, when the lad was of a sufficient age, showed him the results of the business, and George said they ought to sell letter paper at the tobacco counter, seeing that the figures there were stationary. Mrs. Rollinson gave this remark as “George’s latest” to a customer, a short, clean-shaven man, who patronised the shop for lucifer matches, and the customer pronounced it good; later, in calling, he mentioned he had worked it into a burlesque at the Strand Theatre where he was playing, and that it went fairly well. He added that he had never yet found the perfect tobacco, and now almost despaired of doing so; described the different flavours which he desired. George, listening from the shop parlour, asked permission of his mother to make a few experiments; she gave her consent, on the understanding that there should be no waste. The results, tried in the celebrated actor’s pipe, gained emphatic approval, and George suggested a letter should be written from the Theatre embodying these compliments and bearing a signature. The letter was framed, set in the window. Within a week Mrs. Rollinson found herself compelled to engage the services of an assistant on the tobacco side, a worthy, well-favoured man who thenceforth for many years, in accepting his wages on Saturday nights, made a proposal of marriage to her. Mrs. Rollinson declined, in set form, on the grounds that she wished to look after George.

“Very well then,” he would say resignedly. “Then I s’pose I must wait.”

On a Saturday when George brought a young lady from High Street, Marylebone, to the shop, and introduced her to his mother with the remark, “I want you two to be friends!” Mrs. Rollinson, greatly upset, perturbed the assistant by giving in reply to the usual question an unusual answer. He went out of the shop in a dazed condition, and on the Monday morning a letter came from him, stating that, on reflection, he decided he was unworthy of the great honour, and he hoped Mrs. Rollinson would not mind if, instead, he sailed for Canada.

“It’s all for the best!” said Mrs. Rollinson. After going to chapel twice on the intervening Sunday, she was regarding the possibility of the engagement of her son with greater calm. “George will have to work harder, and I’m good for several years yet. We shall rub along all right. He needn’t get married until he’s thirty. It’s quite fashionable nowadays for gentlemen to wait until they’re getting on in life.”

She told him that her first criticism of the girl had been made on the impulse of the moment: she now begged to withdraw the word “minx” and to substitute a more flattering noun.

“Very glad to hear you say that, mother. She’s a girl with most wonderful ideas in her head.”

“That doesn’t matter,” replied Mrs. Rollinson tolerantly, “so long as she leaves them there.”

“What I mean is, extraordinarily ambitious.”

“I’m like that, too,” she remarked. “I’ve set my ’eart on having the front of the shop done up this spring. Me and her will get on capitally together. Make your mind quite easy. She can come here every Christmas day and now and again on Sundays—but not too often—and when eventually you get married, why, if all goes well, I’ll retire and I’ll leave you the business. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?”

“Mother,” the lad blurted out, “she wanted it to be a secret for a time, but I can’t keep it back from you. We’re married already!”

“No, George, my boy. That isn’t true, surely!”

“I take all the responsibility,” he went on, “but she said it was no use letting the grass grow under our feet.”

“I wish,” said Mrs. Rollinson aside, to the negro figure in the corner, “that grass was growing over her head!”

This was the final word of a vehement nature that George’s mother used in regard to her daughter-in-law. When she took some of the furniture, and rode away on the tail of the van to Chalk Farm, she told the middle-aged man with the green baize apron that there was nothing like retiring from business whilst one was still capable of enjoying life: to the lady who owned the house where the furniture was unloaded she mentioned, in taking possession of the two rooms on the ground floor, that her only visitors would be her son and her son’s wife; she hoped they would be in and out of the place frequently. Mrs. Rollinson gave a short, enthusiastic description of the bride and remarked that she already looked upon the girl as her own daughter.

“It’ll be a comfort to me, ma’am,” said the landlady mournfully, “to have a merry party about the house. The only thing is—I don’t mean anything personal—but I’ve generally found that when parties were cheerful, they turned out to be rather bad payers.”

Mrs. Rollinson produced her pass-book; exhibited figures showing the balance to her credit.

“That’s good enough,” said the other, with something like rapture. She was leaving the room, but curiosity detained her at the edge of the carpet. “You must have had some rare strokes of luck, in your day, ma’am!”

Mrs. Rollinson shook her head resolutely. “It’s all been saved out of hard work,” she declared.

“I was half hoping,” remarked the landlady, relapsing into gloom, “it was a case of easy come, easy go!”

The expected callers did not arrive on the first Sunday afternoon, although tea was prepared, crumpets ready, and Mrs. Rollinson had rehearsed several amiable speeches to be addressed to her daughter-in-law. So soon as it became dusk she walked down to Southampton Row, and from the opposite side of the roadway took a view. The shop was shuttered, and, alarmed by this—Sunday evening was one of the best times for receipts—she crossed, and read the notice. Retail Department Closed, said the bills. Central Office of the English Tobacco Syndicate. Branches all over the Country. Capital—and here so many figures (mainly noughts) that Mrs. Rollinson could not reckon them.

“Slippery money,” she said, on the way home. She paid the cabman in threepenny pieces, and he remarked that she might as well also hand over the offertory bag.

Young Mrs. George Rollinson delayed her call for nearly two years, and then she had no occasion to pay a fare; her manner when, on leaving Chalk Farm, she said to the coachman—

“Home, Watson!”

—Was, in itself, proof of the ease with which cultured habits can be acquired by those who set their minds to the task. Before going she, prefacing by the remark that she had called for a quiet chat, spoke at length and with great rapidity. They were living, George and herself, up West; Mrs. Rollinson observed that the exact address was not tendered, and a return call was evidently unnecessary. The present scheme was going on remarkably well, astonishingly well, amazingly well, and young Mrs. Rollinson had special cause for gratification in that it originated with her. For various reasons that her mother-in-law would not understand, if explained, the present scheme had taken the place of the old one, and a still newer one was in contemplation. George and his City friends knew how to manage these affairs to the best advantage. Unfortunately, it seemed likely the public might exhibit a certain reticence when the new idea was submitted to them, and investors would only become eager when they discovered that the shares, or most of them, had been privately subscribed. Just as many people only wanted to go to theatres where the notice “House Full” was exhibited, so some did not apply for shares unless they anticipated difficulty in procuring them.

“And George,” said young Mrs. Rollinson, refastening her fur coat, “is anxious to show he had not forgotten you, and he asked me to say that, for the sake of old times, he is quite willing to let you take up—”

“You tell George,” interrupted his mother, “that whenever the time arrives that he wants to be kept out of the workhouse, he can come along to me!”

I think I said something in approval of young Mrs. Rollinson’s manner of giving instructions to her coachman. To be exact, it ought to be mentioned that there was a distinct trace of asperity in her tones.

Young Mrs. Rollinson said “Home, Watson!” on a good many occasions, and at various places, before the one evening when she gave to the coachman a different destination; the two well-matched horses broke down the austere behaviour of a life-time by winking at each other. George arrived at Chalk Farm by yellow omnibus, that night, after his mother had gone to rest in the back room; she came out with no indication of surprise, and started at once to make up a bed for him on the sofa. He seemed inclined to retain possession of his silk hat, partly that he might gaze into it as he gave halting explanations, but his mother wrested this from him, and ordered him to make himself at home.

“I never heard for certain,” she said, when he had come to an end of the list of disasters, “but are there any children?”

George shook his head negatively.

“That’s just as well,” she remarked, with cheerfulness. “Now promise me, George, before we settle anything else: don’t divorce her.”

“I’m willing to give you my word, mother.”

“Good!” she said. “That means the trouble is over. No more Rollinsons will have to undergo the test. Other people will, but not a Rollinson. Something seems to tell me that I shall out-live you, and I shall make it my business to see that you earn honestly every penny you require.”

* * * * *

The single worry that came later was when Merry Hampton won the Derby. Mrs. Rollinson allowed George one speculation a year in the form of a half-crown ticket for a sweep-stake; prospects of success appeared sufficiently remote. George, on the canal bridge in High Street, was exhibiting to a friend his winnings when the sovereigns slipped through his fingers, and disappeared in the water below. The friend, taking the situation with great good-humour, remarked that it looked like a case of _felo s. d._

VI—PRICE OF JAMES McWINTER

THEY came separately, and rather stealthily, to the restaurant in Little Compton Street, giving a cautious look up and down the street before entering. Many folk in Soho wear the brims of soft hats flattened down over eyes, carry hands deep in overcoat pockets, and walk close to shop windows, hesitating slightly before turning a corner. The restaurant patrons did not belong to this type. Some of the early-comers spoke to a constable, and said, exhibiting an envelope, because they mistrusted their French accent:

“Which do you reckon now is my best way to get to this address?”

The policeman, pointing a gloved hand to the large window that had muslin curtains of the previous summer, replied:

“If you ain’t careful, sir, it’ll bite you.”

The constable, after the first inquiries, was able to recognise the type and, interrupting the question, indicated the doorway silently with a nod of his helmet without interrupting the task of slapping his shoulder; he mentioned to an anxious younger colleague who came up and put an inquiry that they were not in his opinion so much Anarchists as country gents out on the spree. Inside the Restaurant Chicot the head waiter had also gained experience, and, as the visitors arrived, he said, “Mr. Aumairst, yes?” and with a bow led the way to a long table, that had originally been three, at the end of the large room. Chairs leaned forward in the attitude of saying grace, and these were pulled back by the head waiter, whilst a short page-boy stood on tiptoe to assist the guests in removing overcoats, mufflers, and hats. Guarded salutations—“Hullo, Burnham, old man! What sort of an east wind blew you in here?”—and newcomers examined the menu card with a puzzled air, giving it all up after a cursory examination excepting the plum-pudding item, and joined the rest in taking a seat and in looking over the shoulder.

“I’d no notion we were to be all of us invited. What’s the idea?”

“H. A.” was the reply, in confident tones. “H. A. knows what he’s up to.”

“I quite feel that about him. Apart from liking to show off, and not being able to afford to do it, old Amherst is no fool. But whilst I know that he knows what he’s up to, I can’t say that I always know what he knows about knowing— See what I mean, don’t you? Is this him, in the Russian-bear costume?”

Mr. Amherst, in a brand-new fur-lined overcoat, was scarcely the man to deprive the public of a full view of it, and he resisted the page-boy’s attempt to take possession at the door. Diners at other tables glanced up. Two matronly ladies at the corner said something in a foreign language and suspended the rule which orders that one should not laugh at one’s own jokes. Men gave their closer attention to the trim young figure in a small sealskin cap and warm costume who followed so soon as Mr. Amherst’s whirling arms made it safe to do so.