CHAPTER II

A PRODIGAL FATHER

Alighting at the tiny station of Thatch Lane, she was immediately lapped around with a cool bath of air, refreshing as water after the dust and turmoil of a day in London. She walked quickly along the tree-lined road; each house a sleeping mystery divided from the next by a dimness of hedge and garden. Occasionally a light-pricked window; footfall of an invisible passer-by; long echoing shriek from the railway line, as the train in a rushing curve was seen cleaving the fields.

Peter halted beneath a solitary lamp-post, swung open a white gate on her left, passed up the neat gravel path of Bloemfontein, and, bringing forth her latchkey, was just about to let herself in, when she became aware of a blurred bundle, somewhat darker than the darkness, squatting on the steps.

“Hullo!”

“Hullo!” responded the bundle forlornly.

“Have you lost your way?”

“N-no, but there’s nobody to open to us.”

Peter had not looked upon the huddled form in the light of an evening caller: “I’m sorry, I thought you were a beggar--No, I don’t mean that--but it’s awfully dark, isn’t it?” with a quick attempt to retrieve her blunder. “But who are you?”

“Oh, please, I’m Chavvy!”

Came a heavy step upon the gravel. A looming figure returned from what had evidently been a tour of exploration round the back premises:

“No luck, my dear. All bolted, even the pantry window. We shall just have to wait.”

“Father!” exclaimed Peter, relieved from her equal fear of burglars or eccentric demigods, which latter she recollected were in the habit of occasionally week-ending with unsuspecting mortals.

“That you, Peter? Hooray, hooray! Can you let us into this infernal house? we’ve been knocking since half an hour,” Bertram Kyndersley sounded not a whit depressed by the occurrence.

“Aunt Esther is out. But cook had no right to leave the house alone.” Peter inserted the key, and opened to a square hall, blue-papered, with pleasant glimpses beyond of a gas-lit dining-room, its table spread with wine and fruit, with seed-cake and cress sandwiches.

“Aren’t you coming in, Chavvy?” the man spoke impatiently, of a sudden convinced that something was wrong with a universe that permitted to his daughter a latchkey, while himself was forced to nocturnal prowlings and pantry windows.

“May I--Pierrot?”

“Good God, yes!” he helped the bundle to its feet, and brought it into the hall. Peter, who from the high plaintive tones had expected to see a child, was astonished when Chavvy resolved itself into a girl some four or five years older than herself; though stunted in growth, and with dark hair scattered loosely about the shoulders. She wore an odd assortment of what looked like rags, but taken separately, proved a faded green jersey, a brown muffler, scanty red skirt, coloured stockings gaping with huge holes, shoes likewise ornamented, and a Neapolitan red fishing-cap that didn’t match the skirt.

Bertram too had a threadbare appearance, though his waist-line had considerably increased its girth of late, and his eye seemed to have melted more than was good for it. Nothing could detract, however, from a certain picturesqueness which clung about him like an aroma, and he met Peter’s mildly wondering gaze with his old jaunty smile.

“This is my wife, Peter!”--and waited to be cursed or blessed, as fortune decreed.

Chavvy took an impulsive step forward, both hands held out: “Please ... we are so tired and cold and hungry ... and--and I promise never to come between you and Pierrot!”

“Pierrot?” Peter felt that this sobriquet bestowed upon her slightly obese parent, added the last absurd touch of unreality to the situation:

Pierrot and Chavvy--the doorstep vigil--tired and cold and hungry--the prodigal and the play-actress--certainly a snowstorm was lacking, but Miss Esther on her return home might be trusted to supply this last essential.

Nevertheless, with all her artificial appeal, there was about poor little third-rate Chavvy something genuinely pathetic, though one felt instinctively that this was her favourite adjective and ought not to be encouraged; genuinely pathetic in the north-east, where she saw herself attractively pathetic in the south-west. Peter was irresistibly reminded of the touring road-companies she had known in her pre-Bloemfontein days; their jargon, their manners, and careless bonhomie. And in this spirit she bade her stepmother heartily welcome.

“Come in, both of you; cut all explanations, they don’t matter much, any old way! And help yourselves to whatever you want in the food line. I say, though, you’re shivering,--half a jiff, while I light a fire! Rather eccentric in June--Auntie’s hair will stand on end when she sees. Yes, that’s right, off with your jersey and cap, sling them anywhere ... what pretty hair you’ve got.” Peter talked very fast, concealing intense amusement at her father’s latest escapade, and uncaring that the trimly conventional dining-room was being transformed as if by magic to a fair replica of cheap theatrical lodgings: Chavvy squatting on the hearthrug, her sharp white features lit by the wavering flames, the while she peeled a tangerine and carelessly littered the skin in the fender; jersey, cap and muffler tossed anyhow on the floor; firescreen (hand-painted with lilies) upset; Bertram lounging in an arm-chair, his boots half-way up the mantelpiece, and spilling wherever most convenient the ash of a particularly foul-smelling cigar; a glass of port streaming its contents across the white cloth, and dripping slowly from the table’s edge; crumbs on every plate; Peter herself astride the table, listening to irrelevant anecdotes of shoddy people whose names she did not even know, and delighting at the taint of vulgarity within her which woke so very naturally to the prevailing atmosphere.

--“By the way,” she interrupted a stirring narrative of how one Billy Devereux--such a dear boy--had been slung out of work because the leading lady--vain old beast--had bestowed his rôle and her affections upon a youth with longer eyelashes than Billy’s,--“by the way, dad, are you stopping?”

Bertram drew from his pocket a shilling, a threepenny bit and a halfpenny:

“’Tis the very last shilling That with me would stay,”

in a tenor voice of exceeding charm;

“All its charming companions Have faded away----”

“And therefore I have come to seek shelter beneath your aunt’s roof; dwelling amidst so much luxury, she will surely not begrudge me my cup of cold water,” and he sipped appreciatively at the port wine.

“And were she in the cauld blast My plaid should shelter her”

he warbled anew. “Not that she’s ever likely to be in a cauld blast, old skinflint stick-by-the-fire!” in soft parenthesis.

Peter said no more. Bertram, reduced to sudden penury, had once before returned in this fashion, but never yet with a wife. Miss Esther did not approve of her brother-in-law. Miss Esther, bright and chirrupy from an evening’s well-bred enjoyment, was now heard in the front garden, thanking Mr. Lorrimer, an elderly widower inclined to be attentive, for his kindness in seeing her home:

“You won’t refuse to come in for a glass of something and a sandwich? Nothing prepared, you know, nothing prepared; just pleasantly informal,”--innocent of what lay in store for her of pleasant informality.

Miss Esther was extremely short-sighted, and her first impression of the three figures round the fire at the far end of the room, was of Peter and her two young friends, Merle and Stuart. Then her cordial expression froze to antagonism, as advancing towards the male outline, the blur of face shaped itself into the features of her disreputable relative. Bertram, responding to suggestion, became instantly the impudent scaramouch she had always seen in him.

“Hullo, Essie! Pleased to see me? No--you’d rather not be kissed? Just as you like. Chavvy, hither and be introduced.”

Chavvy came shrinkingly forward. Miss Esther, not daring to guess with what Bertram had here invaded the sanctity of her home, bowed stiffly; and presented Bertram to Mr. Lorrimer and Mr. Lorrimer’s daughter Myrtle:

“My brother-in-law.”

“My wife,” said Bertram, explaining Chavvy.

Resulting in a fictitious assumption throughout Thatch Lane, that Miss Worthing’s younger sister--not a bit like her to look at--had turned up unexpectedly--“and Esther doesn’t seem a bit pleased! Such an odd little thing, my dear, almost not quite a lady.”

Which rumour was to cause Miss Esther Worthing a great deal of future annoyance. At present she had only room for one supremely outraged sentiment: that it was not county etiquette to cast your second wife upon the bosom of your deceased first wife’s sister.

“Cook’s lying in a scarlet sleep under the kitchen dresser,” Peter indiscreetly announced, having been in quest of more glasses. “That’s why she didn’t open to them.”

“Oh, dear me, how very tiresome; I hope you hadn’t to wait long.” Admirably the mistress of the house rose to the occasion, to the traditions of caste, and to the height of her linen collars. “But anybody who knows anything about servants will know also what a problem it is,” this to Chavvy, by way of a suitable conversational opening. Peter, her aunt noticed with satisfaction, was for the moment concentrating attention on the Lorrimers.

Chavvy laughed with birdlike gaiety: “Why, I’ve knocked about as long as I can remember in ‘digs.’; and jolly well waited on myself, unless I could afford to tip the slavey. You mustn’t ask me about servants.”

“Are you on the stage, Mrs.--er----?” threw in Myrtle Lorrimer. “How sweet! I once took part in a Greek tableau, and wore sandals and filleted hair.”

“Sure you don’t mean filleted plaice?” interrupted her father, whom Thatch Lane had encouraged as a wit.

“Don’t be silly, father,” pettishly.

“And don’t you be pert, young lady.”

Bertram watched the pair closely and made a few mental notes on the art of being a father, an accomplishment wherein he was liable to grow rusty during his long intervals of absence from Peter. Miss Esther was still dutifully laughing at Mr. Lorrimer’s joke; and Chavvy, more at home now the talk had swung nearer her zone of comprehension, replied eagerly to Myrtle:

“Yes, just think, I played my first part when I was only nine: Wally, in ‘Two little Vagabonds.’ And I used to cry my heart out every night in the consumptive bit at the end--have you seen it?--where he says: ‘Don’t forget Wally, who was your little son for ... for a week!’”

“How sweet!” cried Myrtle Lorrimer again; “how I should love to see you act!”

“I’ll act for you now, if you like.” Accustomed to the society of touring pros, who would open the floodgates of their genius at the slightest inducement, and usually without, Chavvy placed a chair to represent Sydney Carton; and, minus all preliminary hesitations, treated the assembled company to scenes from the life of Little Mimi, her most successful rôle.

... “Oh, Mr. Carton, if only you would not drink so much----”

Bertram indifferently reached his hand for the decanter. Peter, at that moment more niece of Worthing than daughter of Kyndersley, squirmed uneasily at this embarrassing exhibition of histrionics, and wished Chavvy were a canary in a cage, that somebody might throw a cloth to quench her.

... “I fear nothing while I hold your hand. I shall fear nothing when I let it go....”

“Very nice,” said Miss Esther frigidly, “what an excellent memory,” when Chavvy had slowly and with drooping head mounted an imaginary guillotine, and thus signified the performance at an end. Myrtle clapped feebly. Her father muttered, “Ha--hum--yes, Dickens. All very well in its proper place!” which was emphatically with pages uncut upon an English gentleman’s bookshelf. And Little Mimi, aware suddenly that she was a stranger among the Philistines, fled to Bertram’s side, and, looking frightened, laid her cheek against his hand.

Peter thought, “I’m sure somebody told her once that she had eyes like a trapped fawn or a jugged hare or something of that sort.” Chavvy’s appearance gave rise to any amount of zoological speculation.

The Lorrimers rose to go. This type of entertainment was not what they expected to find at Bloemfontein, and they were quite unreasonably disappointed in Miss Worthing. With lowered prestige, that lady returned from the hall to her transfigured dining-room.

“Are you spending the night here, may I ask, Bertram?”

“We are spending many nights here, Esther,” he assured her gravely. And added in conversational tone: “If you turn us out, we shall starve.”

Where was the man’s proper pride, Miss Esther wondered disapprovingly. Well, well, she supposed it was her duty to put them up for a day or two. One couldn’t let people starve; it wasn’t done; and really, that impossible little person in the red cap looked nothing but skin and bone. Miss Esther offered to show the bride to her room. And added a silent determination to draw special attention to the cake of soap on the washstand.

“Run along, Chavvy,” quoth Chavvy’s lord and master.

She hung back and pouted. Then went slowly forward to meet hostility, awaiting her at the threshold.

“Won’t you,” she faltered, “won’t you try to love me just a little?”

Upon this she made her exit. The door closed behind the twain, leaving Miss Esther’s reply to the imagination.

Peter crossed to the fireplace, lit a cigarette, and stood looking down upon the man in the arm-chair. Noted with pity that the topmost hairs of his head were thinning considerably. Otherwise his florid good looks seemed in no danger from the years. With a certain shock of surprise, she realized how akin they were, he and she; adventurers both, play-actors both; though, lacking her burden of pride, his passage through the world was even more divinely unhampered.

“Hadn’t you better tell me all about it?” she suggested.

When Bertram’s reply came, it was still tinged with borrowed reflections from Mr. Lorrimer, Parent.

“I’ve been a good deal by myself, my dear girl; you don’t seem to realize what the loss of your poor mother meant to me. And you, who might have been a solace and a companion, you preferred to live here in comfort and luxury. I was--lonely. And when this child Chavvy crept into my life, I let her remain, to fill the gap my daughter might have filled.”

Peter thought it over. “No,” she said at length, very gently, “I don’t think that will do. Try again.”

The dark upward-springing moustache was not sufficient to conceal a responsive grin on Bertram’s lips. With considerable ease, he shed his garments of hypocrisy.

“’Pon my word, Peter, I dunno exactly how it happened.”

“Who and what is Chavvy?”

Chavvy, it transpired, was one of those people who have no sober appellation, but answer to such names as Kiddy or Babe or Rags or Little Pal, according to taste. She was also alone in the world. “A weird child, yet with something strangely attractive about her,” would have been Chavvy as visualized by Chavvy. Garments, whatever their previous origin, on her looked oddly tattered. Fancifully she dwelt in a kingdom of dreams and Pierrots and red, red roses and beating-rain-against-the-window-panes,--all the paraphernalia appertaining to quaintness. Actually she dwelt in the fourth or fifth or sixth stratum below normal level of the stage profession; a tangle of veins spreading well beneath the surface; unknown territory save to those who are of it and in it and can never rise above it; underworld of touring companies; fit-up companies; pantomime, concert, and entertainment parties; sketches and repertory and pageant. Comprising intimate acquaintance with the smaller towns, the smaller theatres, the smallest halls; of what audiences will take what type of play and at what season. Underworld where each member has an infallible instinct for ‘dates,’ for ‘something to be had,’ and good-naturedly pass the word from one to the other. Where all names are familiar: “I knew him three years ago in Nottingham; we played together in ‘The Bells’”--drifting friendships, drifting memories, drifting lives; yet all inseparably woven together. London the improbable El Dorado of impossible chances. A glamourless battered underworld, yet from which none of their volition could entirely sever themselves. An occasional one of its members dropped to depths unmentioned and unquestioned; or else was incongruously pitchforked into spheres outside, as now Chavvy and Bertram.

They had met that summer at Blackpool; Chavvy playing ‘Cigarette’ in a very makeshift version of ‘Under Two Flags’; Bertram warbling sentimental ballads in the Masked Quartette of seaside singers. In need of admiration and dalliance, as a burnt child needs the fire, he found Chavvy interesting; alternately teased and pitied her; and told her the story of his life, the latter pastime a never-ending source of pleasure and fount of imagination. Her brain stuffed up with plaintive little Pierrot-poems, she found the man more than interesting; and listened wide-eyed to the story of his life, thinking the while how wonderful it was that he should so obviously be in want of her, poor, shabby....

--“In fact,” said Peter, “she called you Pierrot, and immediately you _were_ Pierrot. There, O my father, you have inherited my very worst tendencies. How did you come to marry her?”

“Scoundrelly manager bunked, and left the whole company in the lurch, with three weeks’ salary owing. And she seemed to sort of cling to me. Masked Quartette did rotten badly. We hung on till our united loose cash was all spent, and then in extremity I bethought me of Esther. I decided it would be quite nice if Chavvy and I came to live with Esther. And I assumed the old lady would prefer us to be married.”

“On the whole,” mused Peter, “I believe you assumed correctly.”

“And so we fixed it up. And--and here we are. Going to scold me?”

“Not as long as you guarantee my stepmother will neither starve me, beat me, nor send me to gather firewood. Come along, dad, we’re supposed to keep early hours here.”

He pulled a grimace. “Can’t see myself sticking it for long. I’ll run up to town to-morrow and see if there’s anything doing in concert parties. I suppose you can lend me my fare and a bit over?”

“As broke as that?”

“You can take it from me, my daughter,” turning to face her, as they mounted the stairs, “that the prodigal would not have returned for his fatted calf while there was the least remnant of a husk left to him.”

--Miss Esther met them on the landing. “There is the spare-room, Bertram; it adjoins mine, so please do not chatter with your wife after half-past ten o’clock. I will give you a face towel and a hand towel. Do not use the bell-rope on any account. And breakfast is at nine precisely,--we are very punctual people here.”