Part 6

The carpenters were early at work the following morning, joining thus to their duties the functions of an alarum clock. As I went out for a stroll at eight, intending to go so far as the fringe of the woods and back, I saw Zwinger walking up and down outside the restaurant, his hands deep in jacket pockets.

“My felicitations,” I said, cheerily, “on the enormous success of—”

Zwinger gave one of his monosyllables that express disinclination for speech, disinclination to listen to speech from other people. Turning, he slippered away.

IX—THE LEADING LADY

TO tell the truth, I was not feeling in my best form. Just before entering the tramcar I had a brief dispute with my mother in regard to the contents of a fruit-shop at the beginning of Gray’s Inn Road. There are many subjects on which the two of us fail to see eye to eye, and frequently a somewhat acrimonious debate ends in triumph on her side. At times, we get along admirably together; at others a recommendation from her that I should not exhibit temper goads me into something like fury. The storm over, I am sorry that it happened. My mother has often remarked that I can be a perfect lady when I like.

“Not a one to nurse a grievance,” she adds. “A couple of minutes and it’s all past and forgotten.”

Our entry into the car was scarcely auspicious, partly because the question of cherries had not vanished from my thoughts, partly because I wanted to go up the steps and my mother was resolved to go inside; the conductor spoke sharply, and my mother resented his tones. He expressed satisfaction in the knowledge that all passengers did not closely resemble us, and my mother retorted that if there were many conductors of his style people would prefer to walk. He said he supposed that she, being a woman, would insist on having the final word, and my mother suggested it must give him a nasty shock to find himself correct for the first time in his life; she added something about his features which struck me as being not in quite the best taste. I tugged at her arm.

“You be quiet!” she said to me sharply. “Perfect worry, that’s what you are. Catch me ever letting you come out again to look at the shops!”

The car started from Holborn on its twopenny journey to Stamford Hill in these circumstances. The conductor, in collecting fares, scowled at me, and I frowned back at him; before going up the steps he looked in again to say ironically that we were a pretty pair. A young man with his sweetheart seated next to us thought the remark was addressed to him, and there ensued a fresh wrangle, at the end of which the youth took the conductor’s number, and half the passengers said the conductor had not gone outside the bounds of common civility; the other half referred to him as a Jack-in-office. The young woman spoke to me and made some complimentary allusion to my looks and general appearance.

“Keep still!” ordered my mother. “I won’t have you talking to Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

I knew that argument was useless; it would have been a waste of time to point out that these names could not be rightly applied to my new friend. She, an amiable person, showed me the Holborn Town Hall, and remarked that she sometimes went to concerts there; the reference must have suggested something to me, for, despite my mother’s efforts to restrain, I lifted up my voice and sang. It was but a simple melody, but the earnestness I put into it seemed to touch the hearts of other passengers, and when I finished they had ceased the dispute regarding the conductor and were nodding to me pleasantly.

“Less noise inside there!” commanded the conductor, returned from upstairs.

“Let her sing if she wants to,” said a matronly woman near the door.

“I’m not a-going to have this tramcar turned into a Queen’s Hall,” he declared, “and you ought to know yourself better than encourage her.”

“I was young myself once.”

“That wasn’t yesterday,” he suggested.

The song had received so much favour that I considered the wisdom of giving them either another or diversifying the entertainment by offering some of my celebrated imitations. These have always been highly successful at home and at the houses of relatives; an uncle of mine remarked on one occasion that they were far and away superior to the originals. I had not, however, previously attempted them before an audience of strangers, and this, for the moment, made me shy and nervous. The moment of hesitation over, I started.

“Now, that’s what I call clever,” said the young man near to us. “Milly, if you could only do something like that I might get reelly fond of you!”

My first idea was to make eyes at him; reflection told me that the love of a man who was so easily influenced could never be worth having, and I reassured the girl with a smile. Glancing up and down the car, I could see that I had now secured complete attention. Men had folded up evening newspapers, and were waiting to see what I would do next; women beamed in my direction and one opposite offered me chocolates. I took the box, but my mother, whose knowledge of the rules of etiquette forms the subject of one of her proudest boasts, said it would be more genteel to select only one of the sweets. I accepted the hint, and my mother—now in good temper, and making no attempt to conceal the fact—remarked to the others that I had always been noted for excellence of behaviour.

I gave next a recitation—one of my own composition—a short but telling piece, with somewhat humorous references to the incident of a cat who found its saucer of milk empty. This went only fairly well; I think I must give more care to voice-production. The matronly lady near the door asked what it was supposed to be all about, and my mother readily furnished a sort of synopsis. Some one begged I would sing again, but, discouraged by the cool acceptance of the recital, I declined, until my mother begged and entreated me not to sing. At the conclusion there was that genuine and hearty applause which every public performer recognises and welcomes.

“Bless my soul!” cried some of the passengers, “Shoreditch Church, already!” They said goodbye to me, and I endeavoured to thank them for their kindness in listening to my poor efforts. One offered me a coin, which I flung upon the floor. I am an amateur, not a professional.

It was as the car went up Stoke Newington Road that I introduced my most diverting item. It has always pleased, but I was not certain that here it would be appreciated. The idea is to begin with a smile, to allow the smile to broaden and become more pronounced; this is followed by a chuckle, and then comes a peal of laughter. My mother identified the early stages, and, trembling with pride, warned the rest to pay special and particular notice. I am not exaggerating when I say that in less than a minute I had the whole car with me—every one amused, some roaring. The conductor put his hand over his face, but was compelled to give way, and he went so far as to admit, very handsomely, that it was the funniest thing he had witnessed outside the Dalston Hippodrome.

“Don’t tire yourself, darling,” begged my mother solicitously, and speaking in aristocratic tones. “Be careful not to overdo it. You know what you’re like when you’ve been excited.”

I pushed her advice aside, and when the car slowed up near the station I do believe all who were going on to the terminus felt honestly sorry to see me preparing to leave. As we stood on the pavement—the conductor had given us a hand, and he apologised for brusqueness of behaviour at the start, explaining that there had been an awkward passenger on the previous journey, and they had come to words—as we stood, I say, on the pavement, every one in the car waved hands, and the young man, I was gratified to notice, blew a kiss.

“Hullo, Ernest!” said my mother. “Here we are at last. Been waiting long?”

“Months and months and months,” replied my father. “What sort of a girl has she been? Baby,” he went on, addressing me, and taking me in his arms, “you may be as clever as your mother tries to make out, but I take me oath you don’t get none the lighter as time goes on!”

X—TIME’S METHOD

“TRAIN rather late, surely,” remarked Mr. Chelsfield deferentially to the Inspector.

“What do you expect?” demanded the official, turning upon him suddenly. “What do you look for at a time like this?”

“My son!” replied the other, with pride. “Me and his mother have give him six months at a boarding-school in Kent, and he’s coming home this afternoon.”

“I don’t mean what you mean.” The Inspector became more calm as he essayed the task known to railway men as knocking sense into the heads of the public. “What I intended to say was that at this time of the year, and with all these specials about, it’s only reasonable to assume that the ordinary trains— See what I’m driving at, don’t you? Steam’s a wonderful invention, but we can’t do impossibilities. Think of the old coaching-days; what must it have been like then?”

“His mother’s waiting at home, else I shouldn’t be so eager.”

“Ah!” said the Inspector, with a touch of either sentiment or condescension. “We all know what women are.”

Mr. Chelsfield, walking along the platform with the Inspector for the sake of company and the encouragement of warmth, had to admit that he felt equally anxious, and offered the present of a cigar which he described as harmless; the official accepted it graciously, and promised to make it the subject of an experiment on the following Sunday afternoon. In return he gave the latest news from Chislehurst, and guaranteed to eat his silk hat if the Emperor recovered. He felt sorry for Napoleon, and expressed the view that it was a pity there was only one son in the family. Nice enough young fellow, it was true; he had shaken hands with the Inspector once, but if anything happened to the Prince Imperial, where would they be? The Inspector’s estimate of the right number in a family coincided with the number in his own.

“This,” said Mr. Chelsfield, with a nod in the direction of the down line—“this is the only one we’ve got. Only one we ever had.”

“Take care not to spoil him. That’s always the risk when there’s only one. Now my six— Here’s the train signalled. Get to the other end of the platform, and then you can’t miss him.”

The platform was long under its wooden roof, and Mr. Chelsfield could not move with the celerity he had shown in the early ’sixties; some of his colleagues at the warehouse said it was rheumatism, but he declared it to be only a slight stiffness of the joints. Passengers were going through the barrier, and, flushed by anxiety, he looked about; presently made a dash through the crowd, seized a lad who wore a mortar-board, and pinched his ear affectionately. On the lad turning and demanding an explanation, Mr. Chelsfield apologised for his error, and hurried off to continue his search.

“Three hours and a half,” said the friendly Inspector later. “That’s what it is before the next. It isn’t worth while waiting if you only live up in Holborn. Hop into a ’bus outside the station.”

“I must,” Mr. Chelsfield admitted concernedly. “I’m bound to go back and tell his mother. She’ll be out of her mind else.”

“Just my argument,” claimed the Inspector. “Now, if you’d got six, like I have—”

Mr. Chelsfield stepped out of the omnibus at Chancery Lane, and, paying the conductor, went along to Bedford Row with some wisps of the straw belonging to the conveyance attached to his boots. He felt himself to be on the edge of a painful scene, and wondered where he should find the sal volatile if it happened to be wanted. The front door of the offices, with its elaborate knocker, was open, and he went slowly downstairs to the living-rooms.

“Well?” said his wife. He shook his head. “Speak up!” she commanded; “I can’t hear when you turn your face to the wall and mumble like that.”

He gave the explanation and waited for signs of collapse.

“You’re a pretty one to send to a railway-station, and no mistake!” she remarked, taking off the tea-cosy. “Another time I must go myself.”

“None for me, mother,” he said desolately. “I couldn’t drink it even if you poured it out. Wonder what’s happened to the boy?”

“How should I know?”

He walked up and down the room, looked through the window at the iron grating, and rubbed his head furiously with a red pocket-handkerchief, the wife watching him with an amused expression. As she took the knife in order to cut the home-made cake, still warm from the oven, he raised his hand as a feeble protest against asking him to taste food.

“Can we have the winder open?” he asked submissively. “This room seems stuffy to me, or else it is that I’m upset. I feel—I feel as though I can’t sit down at this table.”

“Suppose,” said his wife, with a wink—“suppose you have a look underneath it.”

The boy crawled out, smoothed his hair, and submitted a forehead to his parent; the mother came near to choking with delight at the success of her elaborate scheme, and presently leaned head exhaustedly against the antimacassar which protected the back of the horsehair easy-chair. How on earth had they missed each other?—that was what the delighted father wanted to know. Henry must have jumped out of the train and cut away uncommonly sharp. Henry, permitted under the special circumstances to discard convention and begin with cake, working back through the toast to the bread and butter, confessed that he had lost no time.

“But, my lad,” urged his father more seriously, “you knowed that I was coming to meet you.”

“Had another fellow with me,” replied the boy.

“Oh!”—arresting a doubled piece of bread and butter on its way from the plate—“and didn’t you want him to see me?”

“Don’t be silly, father!” interposed the mother. “Henry, my child, ask if you want a second piece.”

“It wasn’t exactly that,” said the boy.

“Then, perhaps, you’ll kindly tell me what was the reason. Come on, now; out with it! I want an answer.”

“Thought perhaps you might kiss me, father. And Watherston standing by.”

“Very natural on the boy’s part,” declared the mother. “You forget that Henry’s growing up. He doesn’t mind it in private, but there comes a time when a boy doesn’t want all this fuss in public.”

“If that was the only reason—” said the father.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full!” ordered his wife. “You never see Henry do it. And one arm off the table, if you please.” Her husband obeyed, taking up an attitude of greater precision and obvious discomfort. “That sounds like Gleeson & Co. going out; I shall have to see about my pail and flannel, and get up there and do their floor.”

“I thought—” began the boy sharply.

“We decided otherwise, my dear,” she said. “We didn’t settle it in a hurry by any means; your father and me talked it over night after night, and eventually we came to a definite conclusion.”

“You see, my lad”—the father took up the explanation—“there was money going out for your schooling, and provisions don’t get no cheaper, and we was both anxious not to touch the little nest-egg we’ve put by. Besides”—with spirit, on noting the crimson look of annoyance on his son’s face—“besides, it’s purely a matter for us to settle. If your mother doesn’t mind going on with the housekeeper work, and if I don’t object to her doing it, why, there’s nothing more to be said.”

The tea-table endured a silence of nearly a minute. The two parents examined the pattern of the oilcloth that covered it.

“Pardon me,” said the boy, with the new manner acquired at the boarding-school, “but am I to understand that my feelings are not to be considered in the matter?”

The mother put out her hand quickly and patted her husband’s arm, upraised to give a gesture that would emphasise his reply. He dropped it, and took a long, loud drink from a saucer that trembled.

“We can talk about this,” she said hurriedly, “another time. We shall have a clear fortnight, Henry, before you start work. Say grace!” They bowed their heads, and joined in the Amen. “Did you make some nice new friends at the boarding-school, my dear? We’ve arranged all about your party for the fifteenth, and I think, by a little scrounging and a hand-round supper, we ought to be able to manage twelve. Including us three, that is. If we go over that, there’s always the risk of having the unlucky number, and that spoils everybody’s pleasure. Come along with me, and we can have a good talk over the arrangements whilst I’m tying on my apern. What I was wondering was whether we should have all boys, old friends of yours about the neighbourhood, or whether to invite a few girls. There’s your friend Jessie,” she bustled on waggishly. “We mustn’t let her feel neglected. Always asks after you, Jessie does.” She lowered her voice. “Your father’s got the idea into his head that the boarding-school may have induced you to be high and mighty, and make you look down on them and us. But of course, my dear, I know better.”

The boy was leaning against the stout oak door later, as his mother cleaned and hearthstoned the steps; two minutes, she remarked, and her work would be over. In reply to his urgent appeal, she gave a promise that so soon as he began to earn money the work should be finished for good. A lad in a mortar-board came through from the direction of Holborn, and strolled up on the other side, examining the numbers. Attracted by the sound of voices, he crossed over and spoke.

“I say, my good woman,” he said, with cheerful condescension, to the kneeling figure, “Number thirty-five, I want. These figures are so confoundedly indistinct. Name, Chelsfield—Henry Chelsfield. Can you tell me where I shall find him?”

“You haven’t fur to go,” she remarked, and beckoned with her handful of flannel. “I must apologise for being caught in my disables,” she went on, levering herself up with the aid of the pail. “Shan’t hear the last of this for a long time. Still, as I say, we’ve all got to live.”

Her son came forward, and, waiting for the introduction, she smoothed her grey hair with the back of a wet hand. The boy’s father came out, too, wearing a tasselled smoking-cap rakishly; to honour the occasion he had lighted the fellow to the cigar given away to the friendly Inspector.

“Hullo, Chelsfield!”

The boy glanced at his mother, looked over a shoulder at his father. He hesitated for a moment, then cleared the damp steps at a single jump, and taking his friend’s arm, led him across the roadway.

“Called round, Chelsfield,” the mortar-board lad said, “called round at once to tell you that I find I’m engaged two deep for the evening you’ve fixed for Drury Lane. Now, what I want to suggest is this. How about you changing your date?”

The father and mother stood just outside the doorway, speaking no word, but listening and waiting. The visitor made a movement to re-cross, but Henry detained him. The mother coughed in order to give a reminder of her presence. The visitor, breaking off in the discussion, recommended that Henry should fetch a cap and stroll with him as far as Gray’s Inn Road and see him into a Favorite omnibus for the return to Islington. Henry ran in, with a mumbled explanation to his parents.

“Quite an old-fashioned bit of London here,” remarked the polite boy.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Chelsfield, coming forward eagerly. “Oh, yes, sir. People often notice that. Years ago, I b’lieve, quite aristocrats used to live here. London’s changing.”

“Improving,” suggested the lad.

“I reckon the next thirty years will show a lot of difference. Me and the wife,” he continued, with a jerk of the head towards her, “me and her, we recollect ’Olborn, of course, long before the Viaduct was opened. Previous to that—”

Their boy came out between them with a rush.

“Ready, Chelsfield?”

“Quite ready, Watherston,” he replied, nervously and briskly.

“Sorry to have missed seeing your people,” remarked the polite lad, as they went off arm-in-arm. “Perhaps some other time I may have the pleasure.”

“Perhaps!” he said.

* * * * *

The space of time mentioned by old Chelsfield elapsed, but he prevented himself from enjoying the content of a successful prophet by commencing rather absurdly to break up in health almost immediately after venturing upon the tolerably safe anticipation. Amongst the changes of thirty years was the fact that Chelsfield, as a name, had become better known; even the folk who flew through the main streets of London on motor omnibuses, and had to give nearly all their attention to the holding on of hats, could not evade recognition of the hoardings; the Chelsfield posters declined to be ignored. If you closed your eyes to these, you were nearly sure to encounter the name in your daily paper. If you missed it in your daily paper, it came into the letter-box, marked “Very Important.” If you dodged it there, it confronted you on your theatre programme at night. Leaving the theatre and endeavouring to forget the name, you saw it at a popular corner, being written with great deliberation in illuminated letters, as though some invisible giant had made up his mind to grasp the rudiments of education.

Henry Chelsfield himself was not insensible to the determined appeals, and, going home in his electric brougham, he counted them. Thus one evening he found a dreary gap between the Cobden statue and the Britannia, and immediately made memorandum of the circumstance in his note-book, in order that the deplorable omission might be attended to on the following day. All very well for the advertising agents to send him a box for the theatre, but these people had to be kept up to the mark.

“I can be amiable enough,” he said to the clock inside the brougham, “in private affairs, but I’m very different where money matters are concerned.”

Chelsfield might be flattering himself, or he might be telling the truth; anyhow he was a Londoner, with a Londoner’s weakness for orders for the play. That was why he had left his offices early; that was why he proposed to eat at an unusual hour; that was why, on arriving at Hampstead, he ordered the man to bring the brougham round again at half-past seven. He dined alone, with a portrait of a good-looking woman, painted by Herkomer, facing him; at her side a lad, with small eyes rather close to each other. Chelsfield lifted his glass when the two maids had left the room and said:

“Jessie!”

He did not drink a toast to the boy.

Watherston, from a house nearer the Heath, came in as Chelsfield pretended to smoke a cigarette—he had been thinking that one man in a private box would present a lonely figure to the audience; the gallery would say that he had no friends—and Watherston asked to be excused for once from joining in a game of billiards.

“Nothing could have happened better!” cried Chelsfield, arousing himself. “You have only to run home and jump into evening dress, and—”

“My boy wants me to take him to see the conjuring people at St. George’s Hall.”

“You’re not spoiling that lad of yours, I hope, Watherston?”

“I’m not spoiling my lad,” retorted Watherston, speaking with emphasis. The two men gazed at each other with the sudden acerbity of manner that comes at times to the closest friends. Chelsfield’s eyes went presently to the fruit on the table. “Ever hear anything of yours?” demanded Watherston, following up his advantage.

“There’s no doubt whatever,” replied Chelsfield testily, “that he disappeared in South Africa. I don’t want to discuss the matter again. He was older than your boy. And you know as well as I do that after his mother died he went to the bad.”

“You told him to stay there?”

“I can give you and your lad a lift as far as Kingsway,” said Chelsfield, “if that’s of any use.”

“It won’t be much help to us,” replied his friend candidly; “but we shall be company for you.”