Nother bucket o’ mortar, Mr. Ooze.”
The excessively thin man glanced up from the puddle of lime that he was stirring and regarded the excessively fat man with a smile of meek interrogation.
“’Nother bucket o’ mortar, Willie Ooze, and don’t you put your ’ead on one side at me like a bloomin’ cockatoo.”
Mr. William Hughes stuttered an apology. “I was thin-thinking.”
“Thin-thinking!” The fat man laughed good-naturedly. Turning his back on his helper, he gave the brick which he had just laid an extra tap to emphasize his incredulity. “’Tisn’t like you.”
The thin man’s feelings were wounded. To the little boy who looked on this was evident from the way he swallowed. His Adam’s-apple took a run up his throat and, at the last moment, thought better of it. “But I was thinking,” he persisted; “thinking that I’d learnt something from stirring up this gray muck. If ever I was to kill somebody—you, for instance, or that boy—I’d know better than to bury you in slaked lime.”
“Uml Urn!” The fat man gulped with surprise. He puckered his vast chin against his collar so that his voice came deep and strangled. “It’s scraps o’ knowledge like that as saves men from the gallers. If ’alf the murderers that is ’anged ’ad come to me first, they wouldn’t be ’anging. But—but——” He seemed at last to realize the unkind implication of Mr. Hughes’s naive confession. “But I’d make four o’ you, Willyum! You couldn’t kill me, however you tried.”
In the face of contradiction Mr. Hughes forgot his nervousness. “I could.” he pleaded earnestly. “I’ve often thought about it. I’d put off till you was stooping, and then jump. What with you being so short of breath and me being so long in the arms and legs, why——! I’ve planned it out many times, you and me being such good friends and so much alone together.”
The face of the fat man grew serious with disapproval. “You? ’ave, ’ave you! You’ve got as far as that! You’re a nice domestic pet, I must say, to keep unchained to play with the children.” He attempted to go on with his bricklaying, but the memory of Mr. Hughes’s long arms and legs so immediately behind him was disturbing. He swung round holding his trowel like a weapon. “Don’t like your way of talking; don’t like it. O’ course you’ve ‘ad your troubles; for them I make allowances. But I don’t like it, and I don’t mind telling you. Um! Um!”
The thin man was crestfallen; he had hoped to give pleasure. “But I thought you liked murders.”
“Like ’em! I enjoy them—so I do.” The fat man spoke tartly. “But when you make me the corpse of your conversations, you presoom, Mr. Ooze, and I don’t mind telling you—you really do. Let that boy be the corpse next time; leave me out of it—— ’Nother bucket o’ mortar.”
That boy, who was sole witness to this quarrel, was very small—far smaller than his age. In the big walled garden of Orchid Lodge he felt smaller than usual. Everything was strange; even the whispered sigh of dead leaves was different as they swam up and swirled in eddies. In his own garden, only six walls distant, their sigh was gentle as Dearie’s footstep—but something had happened to Dearie; Jimmie Boy had told him so that morning. “Teddy, little man, it’s happened again”—the information had left Teddy none the wiser. All he knew was that Jane had told the milkman that something was expected, and that the milkman had told the cook at Orchid Lodge. The result had been the intrusion at breakfast of the remarkable Mrs. Sheerug.
For a long while Mrs. Sheerug had been a staple topic of conversation between Dearie and Jimmie Boy. They had wondered who she was. They had made up the most preposterous tales about her and had told them to Teddy. They would watch for her to come out of her house six doors away, so that as she passed their window in Eden Row Jimmie Boy might make rapid sketches of her trotting balloon-like figure. He had used her more than once already in books which he had been commissioned to illustrate. She was the faery-godmother in his Cinderella and Other Ancient Tales: With!6 Plates in color by James Gurney. She was Mother Santa Claus in his Christmas Up to Date. They had rather wanted to get to know her, this child-man and woman who seemed no older than their little son and at times, even to their little son, not half as sensible. They had wanted to get to know her because she was always smiling, and because she was always upholstered in such hideously clashing colors, and because she was always setting out burdened on errands from which she returned empty-handed. The attraction of Mrs. Sheerug was heightened by Jane’s, the maid-of-all-work’s, discoveries: Orchid Lodge was heavily in debt to the local tradesmen and yet (it was Dearie who said “And yet.” with a sigh of envy), and yet its mistress was always smiling.
When Mrs. Sheerug had invaded Teddy’s father that morning, she had come arrayed for conquest. She had worn a green plush mantle, a blue bonnet and, waving defiance from the blue bonnet, a yellow feather.
“I’m a total stranger,” she had said. “Go on with your breakfast, Mr. Gurney, I’ve had mine. I’ll watch you. Well, I’ve heard, and so I’ve dropped in to see what I can do. You mustn’t mind me; trying to be a mother to everyone’s my foible. Now, first of all, you can’t have that boy in the house—boys are nice, but a nuisance. They’re noisy.”
“But Teddy, I mean Theo, isn’t.”
It was just like Jimmie Boy to call him Theo before a stranger and to assume the r么le of a respected parent.
Mrs. Sheerug refused to be contradicted. She was cheerful, but emphatic. “If he never made a noise before, he will now. As soon as I’ve made Theo comfortable, I’ll come back to take care of you.”
Making Theo comfortable had consisted in leading him down the old-fashioned, little-traveled street, on one side of which the river ran, guarded by iron spikes like spears set up on end, and turning him loose in the strange garden, where he had overheard a fat man accusing a thin man of murderous intentions.
Teddy looked round. The walls were too high to climb. If he shouted for help he might rouse the men’s enmity. Neither of them seemed to be annoyed with him at present, for neither of them had spoken to him. There was no alternative—he must stick it out. That’s what his father told Dearie to do when pictures weren’t selling and bills were pressing. Already he had picked up the philosophy that life outlasts every difficulty—every difficulty except death.
Mr. Hughes, having supplied the bucket of mortar, was trying to make himself useful in a new direction. The groan and coughing of a saw were heard. The fat man dropped his trowel and turned. He watched Mr. Hughes sorrowfully.
“Mr. Ooze, that’s no way to make a job o’ that” For the first time he addressed the little boy: “He’s as busy as a one-armed paper-’anger with the itch this s’morning. Bless my soul, if he isn’t sawing more ground than wood.” Then to Mr. Hughes: “’Ere, give me that. Now watch me; this is the way to do it.”
The fat man took the saw from the meek man’s unresisting hand. “You lay it so,” he said. He laid the saw almost horizontal with the plank. The thin man leant forward that he might profit by instruction, and nodded.
“And now,” said the fat man, “you get all your weight be’ind it and drive forward.”
As he drove forward the blade slipped and jabbed Mr. Hughes’s leg. Mr. Hughes sat down with a howl and drew up his trousers to inspect the damage. When the fat man had examined the scratch and pronounced it not serious, he proposed a rest and produced a pipe. “Nice smoke,” he said, “is more comforting than any woman, only I wish I’d known it before I married.” Then he became aware that he alone was smoking.
“What, lost yours, Mr. Ooze? Just what one might expect! You’re the most unlucky chap I ever met, yes, and careless. You bring your troubles on yourself, Willie Ooze. First you go and lose a wife that you never ought to ’ave ’ad, and now you lose something still more valuable.”
“Ah, yes!” The thin man ceased from searching through his pockets and heaved a sigh. “I lose everything. Suppose I’ll go on losing till the grave shuts down on this body o’ me—and then I’ll lose that. My ’air began to come out before I was twenty—tonics weren’t no good. Now I always ’ave to wear a ’at—do it even in the ’ouse, unless I’m reminded. And then, as you say, there was poor ’Enrietta. I’m always wondering whether I really lost ’er, or whether——”
“Expect she gave you the slip on purpose,” said the fat man. “Best forget it; consider ’er as so much spilt milk.”
“That’s just what I can’t do.” Mr. Hughes clasped his bony hands: “It don’t seem respectful to what’s maybe dead.”
As far as Teddy could make out from their conversation, ’Enrietta had once been Mrs. Hughes. On a trip to Southend she had insisted on taking a swing in a highflyer. To her great annoyance her husband had been too timid to accompany her, and she had had to take it by herself. The last he had seen of her was a flushed face and flapping skirt swooping in daring semi-circles between the heavens and the ground. When the swing had stopped and he pressed through the crowd to claim her, she had vanished.
Perhaps it was the blood on the thin man’s leg that prompted the fat man’s observation. “It might ’ave been that.”
“What?”
The fat man drew his finger across his throat suggestively. “That.” He repeated. “It might ’ave ’appened to your ’Enrietta.”
“Often thought it myself.” Mr. Hughes spoke slowly. “But—but d’you think anybody would suspect that I——?”
“They might.” The fat man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It’s usually chaps of your build that does it; as the lofty Mr. Shakespeare puts it, ’I ’ate those lean and ’ungry men.’”
“Very true! Very true! Lefroy was lean and ’ungry. I know, ’cause I once rode with ’im in the same railway carriage.”
Teddy listened, fascinated and horror-stricken, to the fat and thin man swapping anecdotes of murders past and present. For half an hour they strove to outdo each other in ghastliness and minuteness of details.
When they had returned to their work and Mr. Hughes was at a safe distance, the fat man spoke beneath his breath to the little boy: “He’s no good at anything. I keep him with me ’cause we both makes a ’obby of ’omicide—that’s the doctor’s word for the kind o’ illness we was talking about. Also,” here his voice became as refined as Teddy’s father’s, “he amuses me with his Cockney dialect He says he’s unlucky because he was born in a hansom-cab. Whenever I speak to him I call him Ooze and drop my aitches. It’s another of my hobbies—that and keeping pigeons. Pretending to be vulgar relieves my feelings. When one’s married and as stout as I am, if one doesn’t relieve one’s feelings one bursts.”
For the same reason that one lavishes endearments on a dog of uncertain temper, Teddy thought it wise to feign an interest in the fat man’s hobbies. “It can’t be very nice for them,” he faltered.
“For ’oo?”
“The persons.”
“What persons?”
“The persons you do it to.”
“Do it to! Do it to! You’re making me lose my temper, which is bad for me ’ealth; that’s what you’re doing. Now, then, do what? Don’t beat about. Out with it.”
For answer the little boy drew a tremulous finger across his throat in imitation of one of the fat man’s gestures.
The fat man started laughing—laughing uproariously. His body shook like a jelly and fell into dimples. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. At last he shouted: “Mr. Ooze, come ’ere. This little boy—”
Then he stopped laughing suddenly and dropped his rough way of talking. The child’s face had gone desperately white. “Poor chap! Must have frightened you! Here, steady.”
“Now you’ve done it,” said Mr. Hughes, coming up from behind. “And when your wife knows, won’t you catch it!”
There was nothing Mrs. Sheerug enjoyed better than an invalid. Illness in a stranger’s house was her opportunity; in her own house it was her glory. She loved to exaggerate the patient’s symptoms; the graver they were, the more a recovery would redound to her credit. When she had pushed her feet into old carpet-slippers, removed her bodice, put on her plum-colored dressing-gown, and fastened her scant gray hair with one pin into a tight little knob at the back of her head, she felt that she had gone through a ritual which made her superior to all doctors. She had remedies of her own invention which were calculated to grapple with any crisis of ill-health. But she did not allow her ingenuity to be fettered by past successes; each new case which fell into her hands was a heaven-sent chance for experimenting. Whatever came into her head first, went down her patient’s throat.
When she turned her house into a hospital this little gray balloon-shaped woman, with her rosy cheeks, her faded eyes and her constant touch of absurdity, managed to garb herself in a solemn awfulness. When “Mother went ’vetting,’” as Hal expressed it, even her children viewed her with, temporary respect. They weren’t quite sure that there wasn’t something in her witchcraft. So nobody complained if meals were delayed while she stood over the fire stirring, tasting, smelling and decocting. Contrary to what was usual in that unruly house, she had only to open the door of the sickroom and whisper, “Hush,” to obtain instant quiet. At such times she seemed a ridiculous angel into whose hands God had thrust the tragic scales of life and death.
If Teddy hadn’t fainted, he might have gone out of Orchid Lodge as casually as he had entered—in which case his entire career would have been different. By fainting he had put himself into the category of the weak ones of the earth, and therefore was to be reckoned among Mrs. Sheenes friends. A masterly stroke of luck! She at once decreed that he must be put to bed. His pleadings that he was quite well didn’t cause her to waver for a second. She knew boys. Boys didn’t faint when there was nothing the matter with them. What he required, in her opinion, was building up. A fire was lit in the spare-room. Hot-water bottles were placed in the bed and Teddy beside them, arrayed in a kind of christening-robe, the borrowed nightgown being much too long for him.
He hadn’t intended to be happy, but—— He raised his head stealthily from the pillow, so that his eyes and nose came just above the sheet. He had been given a hot drink with strict instructions to keep covered. No one was there; he sat up. What a secret room! Exactly the kind in which a faery-godmother might be expected to work her spells! Two steps led down into it. Across the door, to keep the draughts out, was hung a needlework tapestry, depicting Absalom’s misfortune. A young gentleman, of exceedingly Jewish countenance, was caught in a tree by his mustard colored hair; a horse, which looked strangely like a sheep, was shabbily walking away from under him. It would have served excellently as a barber’s coat-of-arms. All it lacked was a suitable legend, “The Risks of Not Getting Your Hair Cut.”
Against an easel rested an uncompleted masterpiece in the same medium. The right-hand half, which was done, revealed a negress heaving herself out of a marble slab with her arms stretched longingly towards the half which was only commenced. The subject was evidently that of Potiphar’s wife and Joseph. Outlined on the canvas of the unfinished half was a shrinking youth, bearing a faint resemblance to Mr. Hughes as he would have dressed had he been born in a warmer climate.
Encircling the backs of chairs were skeins of wool of various colors; the balls, which had been wound from them, had rolled across the floor and come to rest in a tangle against the fender. In the window, lending a touch of romance, stood a gilded harp, through whose strings shone the cold pale light of the December afternoon. In the grate a scarlet fire crackled; perched upon it, like a long-necked bird, was a kettle with a prodigiously long spout. It sang cheerfully and blew out white clouds of steam which filled the room with the pungent fragrance of eucalyptus.
In days gone by, after listening to his father’s stories, he had often climbed to the top of their house that he might spy into the garden of Orchid Lodge. He had little thought in those days that he would ever be Mrs. Sheerug’s prisoner. From the street a passer-by could learn nothing. Orchid Lodge rose up flush with the pavement; the windows, which looked out on Eden Row and the river, commenced on the second story, so that the curiosity of the outside world was eternally thwarted. He had fancied himself as ringing the bell and waiting just long enough to glance in through the opening door before he took to his heels and ran.
Footsteps in the passage! Absalom swayed among the branches, making a futile effort to free himself. The door behind the tapestry was being opened. Teddy sank his head deep into the pillows, hoping that his disobedience to orders would pass unobserved.
She came down the steps on tiptoe. Her entire bearing was hushed and concerned, as though the least noise or error on her part might produce a catastrophe. She carried a brown stone coffee-pot in her hand and a glass. From the coffee-pot came a disagreeable acrid odor, similar to that of the home-made plasters which his mother applied to his face in case of toothache.
Mrs. Sheerug went over to the fireplace. Before setting the jug in the hearth to keep warm she poured out a quantity of muddy looking fluid. Suspecting that she had no intention of drinking it herself, Teddy shut his eyes and tried to breathe heavily, as though he slept. She came and stood beside him; bent over him and listened.
“Little boy, you’re awake and pretending; what’s worse, you’ve been out of bed.”
The injustice of the last accusation took him off his guard. “If you please, I haven’t. I sat up like this because I wanted to look at that.” He pointed at the Jewish gentleman taking farewell of his horse.
“At that! What made you look at that?”
“I like it.”
To his surprise she kissed him. “That’s what comes of being the son of an artist. There aren’t many people who like it; you’re very nearly the first. I’m doing all the big scenes from the Bible in woolwork; one day they’ll be as famous as the Bayeux tapestries. But what am I talking about? Of course you’re too young to have heard of them. Come, drink this up before it gets cold; it’ll make you well.”
“But I’m quite well, thank you.”
“Come now, little boys mustn’t tell stories. You know you’re not. Smell it. Isn’t it nice?”
Teddy smelt it. It certainly was not nice. He shook his head.
“Ah,” she coaxed, “but it tastes ever so much better than it smells. It’ll make you perspire.”
He did not doubt that it would make him perspire, but still he eyed it with distrust. “What’s in it?” he questioned.
“Something I made especially for you; I’ve never given it to anybody else.”
“But what’s in it?” he insisted with a touch of childish petulance at her evasion.
She patted his hand. “Butter, and brown sugar, and vinegar, and bay leaves. There! It’ll make you sweat, Teddy—make you feel ever so much better.”
“But I’m quite——”
He got no further. As he opened his mouth to assert his perfect health, the glass was pressed against his lips and tilted. He had to swallow or be deluged.
“That’s a fine little fellow.” Mrs. Sheerug was generous in her hour of conquest; she tried to give him credit for having taken it voluntarily. “You feel better already, don’t you?”
“I don’t think,” he commenced; then he capitulated, for he saw her eye working round in the direction of the jug. “I expect I shall presently.”
She tucked him up, leaving only his head, not even a bit of his neck, showing. “If you don’t perspire soon, tell me,” she said, “and I’ll give you some more.”
It was a very big bed and unusually high. At each corner was a post, supporting the canopy. From where he lay he could watch Mrs. Sheerug. Having disentangled several balls of wool and balanced on the point of her nose a pair of silver spectacles, she had seated herself before the easel and was stitching a yellow chemise on to the timid figure of Joseph. The yellow chemise ended above Joseph’s knees; Teddy wondered whether she would give him a pair of stockings.
“I’m getting wet.”
The good little hump of a woman turned. She gazed at him searchingly above her spectacles. “Really?”
“Not quite really,” he owned; “but almost really. At least my toes are.”
“That’s the hot water bottles,” she said. “If you don’t perspire soon you must have some more medicine.”
He did his best to perspire. He felt that she had left the choice between perspiring and drinking more of the brown stuff in his hands. Trying accomplished nothing, so he turned his thoughts to strategy.
“Will they really be famous?”
Again she twisted round, watching him curiously. “Why d’you ask?”
“Because——” He wondered whether he dared tell her.
Usually people laughed at him when he said it. “Because my father wants his pictures to be famous and he’s afraid they never will be. And when I’m a man, I want to be famous; and I’m sure I shall.”
In the piping eagerness of his confession he had thrown back the clothes and was sitting up in bed. She didn’t notice it What she noticed was the brave poise of the head, the spun gold crushed against the young white forehead, and the blue eyes, untired with effort, which looked out with challenge on a wonder-freighted world.
The fire crackled. The kettle hummed, “Pooh, famous! Be contented. Pooh, famous! Be content.”
At last she spoke. “It’s difficult to be famous, Teddy. So many of us have been trying—wasting our time when we might have been doing kindness. What makes a little boy like you so certain——?”
“I just know,” he interrupted doggedly.
Then she realized that he was sitting up in bed and pounced on him. Some more of the brown stuff was forced down his throat and the clothes were once more gathered tightly round his neck.
His eyes were becoming heavy. He opened them with an effort By the easel a shaded lamp had been kindled; the faery-godmother bent above her work.
It seemed the last notes of a dream. He had been awake for some minutes, but had feared to stir lest the voice should stop. Slowly he unclosed his eyes. The voice went on. He had never heard such music; it was deep and sweet and luring. It was like the golden hair of the Princess Lettice lowered from her casement to her lover. It was like the silver feet of laughter twinkling up a beanstalk ladder to the stars. It was like spread wings, swooping and drifting over a fairyland of castellated tree-tops. Now it wandered up the passage and seemed to halt behind the tapestry of Absalom. Now it grew infinitely distant until it was all but lost.
He eased himself out of bed. Save for the pool of scarlet that weltered across floor and ceiling from the hearth, the room was filled with blackness.
“Who’s there?” he whispered.
No answer. He tiptoed up the steps and out into the passage. It was long and gloomy; at the end of it a strip of light escaped from a door which had been left ajar. It was from there that the voice was calling. Steadying himself with his hand against the wall, he stole noiselessly towards it Just as he reached the strip of light the singing abruptly ended.
“No, Hal. You shouldn’t do that. You do it too often. Please not any more.”
“Just once on your lips.”
“If it’s only once. You promise?”
“I promise.”
The door creaked. When he saw them, their bodies were still close together, but as they turned to glance across their shoulders their heads had drawn a little apart. Her hands, resting on the keyboard, were held captive by the man’s. Candles, flickering behind their heads, scorched a hole in the dusk to frame them.
The man’s face was boyish and clean-shaven, self-indulgent and almost handsome. It was a pleasant face: the corners of the mouth turned up with a hint of humor; the lips were full and kind; the eyes blue and impatient His complexion was high and his hair flaxen; his bearing sensitive and a little self-conscious. He was a man who could give himself excessively to any one he loved and who consequently would be always encountering new disappointments.
And the woman—she was like her voice: remote and passionate; haunting and unsatisfying; an instrument of romance for the awakening of idealized desires. She was fashioned no less for the attracting of love than for its repulse. Her forehead was intensely white; her brows were like the shadow of wings, hovering and poised; her eyes now vague as a sea-cloud, now flashing like sudden gleams of blue-gray sunlight Her hair was the color of ancient bronze—dark in the hollows and burnished at the edges. Her throat was her glory—full and young, throbbing like a bird’s and slender as the stalk of a flower. It was her mouth that gave the key to her character. It could be any shape that an emotion made it: petulant and unreasonable; kind and gracious and adoring. She was a darkened house when she was unresponsive; there was no stir in her—she seemed uninhabited. In the street below her windows some chance traveler of thought or affection halted; instantly all her windows blazed and the people of her soul gazed out.
The odd little figure, hesitating in the doorway, had worked this miracle. Her eyes, which had been troubled when first they rested on him, brightened. Her lips relaxed. Like a bubble rising from a still depth, laughter rippled up her throat and broke across the scarlet threshold of her mouth.
“Oh, Hal, what a darling! Where did you get him? And what a dear, funny nightgown!”
She tore her hands free from the man’s. Running to the little boy, she knelt beside him, bringing her face down to his level. As if to prevent him from escaping, she looped her arms about his neck.
“You are dear and funny,” she said. “Where d’you come from?”
Teddy was abashed. He didn’t mind being called dear, but he strongly objected to being called funny. He was terribly conscious of the pink flannel garment which clothed him. It hung like a sack from his narrow shoulders. If Mrs. Sheerug hadn’t safety-pinned a reef in at the neck, there would have been danger of its slipping off him. He couldn’t see his hands; they only reached to where his elbows ought to have been. He couldn’t see his feet; a yard of pink stuff draped them. He had had to kilt it to make his way along the passage. But the garment’s chief offense, as he regarded it, was that it was a woman’s: a rather stout middle-aged woman’s—the sort of woman who had given up trying to look pretty and probably wore a nightcap. Teddy forgot that had he not been press-ganged into sickness, the beautiful lady’s arms would not have been about him. All he remembered was that he looked a caricature at a moment when—he scarcely knew why—he wanted to appear most manly. Mrs. Sheerug was responsible and he felt hotly resentful.
“Where did you come from?”
“Bed.”
“But isn’t it rather early to be in bed? Perhaps you’re not well.”
“I’m quite well.” He spoke stubbornly, looking aside and trying to keep the tears back. “I’m quite well; it’s she who pretends I isn’t.”
“She! Ah, I understand. Poor old boy, never mind.”
She drew him against her breast and kissed him. He thought she would release him; but still she held him. He could feel the beating of her heart and the slow movement of her breath. He didn’t want her to let him go; but why did she still hold him? Shyly he raised his eyes.
“Won’t you smile?” she said. “I’d like to see what you look like. And now tell me, what made you come here?”
“I heard you,” he whispered. “Please let me stay.”
She glanced back at the man; he sat where she had left him, by the piano, watching. She rather liked to make him jealous. Turning to the child, she lowered her voice, “You’ll catch cold if you don’t get back to bed and I’ll be blamed for it. If I come with you, will that be as good as if I let you stay?”
“Oh, better.”
“Then kiss me.”
As she rose from her knees she gathered him in her arms. The man left his seat to follow. She paused in the doorway, gazing across her shoulder. “No, Hal, it’s a time when you’re not wanted.”
“But Vashti——”
She laughed mischievously. “I said no. There’s some one else to-night who wants me all to himself.”
When Teddy became a man and looked back on that night there were two things that he remembered: the first was his pride and sense of triumph at hearing himself preferred to Hal; the second was that love, as an inspiring and torturing reality, entered into his experience for the first time. As she carried him into the darkness of the passage which had been full of fears without her, her act seemed symbolic. Gazing back from her arms, he saw the man—saw the perplexed humiliation of his expression, his aloneness and instinctively his tragedy, yet without pity and rather with contentment In later years all that happened to him seemed a refinement of spiritual revenge for his childish callousness. The solitary image of the man in the dim-lit room, his empty hands and following eyes took a place in the gallery of memory as a Velasquezesque masterpiece—a composition in brown and white of the St. Sebastian of a love self-pierced by the arrows of its own too great desire.
She had picked up a quilt from the bed and wrapt it round him. Having drawn a chair to the fire, she sat rocking with his head against her shoulder. Since she had left the man, she had not spoken. Once the tapestry, falling into place, rustled as though the door were being opened. She turned gladly with a welcoming smile and remained staring into the darkness long after the smile had vanished. A footstep came along the passage. Again she turned, her lips parted in readiness to bid him enter. The footstep slowed as it reached the bedroom, hesitated and passed on.
She had ceased expecting; Teddy knew that by her “Don’t care” shrug of annoyance. Though she held him closely, she seemed not to notice him. With her head bent forward and her mouth a little trembling, she watched the dancing of the flames. He stirred against her.
“Comfy?” she murmured.
“Very.”
She laughed softly. Her laughter had nothing to do with his answer; it was the last retort in a bitter argument which had been waging in the stillness of her mind. When she spoke it was as though she yawned, rubbing unpleasant dreams from her eyes. “Well, little fellow, what are you going to do with me?”
The implied accusation that he had carried her off thrilled him. It was the way she said it—the coaxing music of her voice: it told him that she was asking for his adoration. His arms reached up and went about her neck; his lips stole up to hers. Made shy by what he had done, he hid his face against her breast.
She rested her hand on his head, ruffling his hair and trying to persuade him to look up.
“And I don’t even know your name! What do they call you? And do you kiss all strange ladies like that?”
His throat was choking. He knew that the moment he heard his own voice his eyes would brim over. But he was getting to an end of the list of first things—getting to an age when it wasn’t manly to cry just because the soul was stirred. So he bit his lip and kept silent.
“Ah, well,” she shook her head mournfully, “I can see what would happen. If we married, you would make an obstinate husband. You don’t really love me.”
Her despair sounded real. “Oh, it’s not that. It’s not that,” he cried, dragging her face towards him with both hands.
She took his hands away and held them. “Then, what Is it?”
“You’re so beautiful. I can’t—can’t speak. I can’t tell you.”
She clasped him closer. “Oh, I’m sorry. It was only my fun. I didn’t mean to make you cry. You’re the second person I’ve hurt to-night. But you—you’re only a little boy, and such a dear little boy! We were going to be such good friends. I must be bad-hearted to hurt everybody.”
“You’re not bad-hearted.” The fierceness with which he defended her made her smile. “You’re not bad-hearted, and I do love you. And I want to marry you only—only I’m so little, and you said it only in fun.”
She mothered him till he had grown quiet Then, with her lips against his forehead, “Don’t be ashamed of crying; I like you for it. I’m so very glad we met to-night I think—almost think—you were sent. I hadn’t been kind, and I wasn’t feeling happy. But I’d like to do something good now; I think I’d like to make you smile. How ought I to set about it?”
“Sing to me. Oh, please do.”
In the firelit room she sang to him in a half-voice, her long throat stretched out and throbbing like a bird’s as she stooped above him. She sang lullabies, making him feel very helpless; and then of lords and cruel ladies and knights. Shadows, sprawling across walls and ceiling, took fantastic shapes: horsemen galloping from castles; men waving swords and grappling in fight A footstep in the passage! He felt her arms tighten. “Close your eyes,” she sang, “close your eyes.”
She held up a hand as Mrs. Sheerug entered. “Shish!”
“Asleep?”
She nodded.
Mrs. Sheerug came over to the fire and gazed down. He could feel that she was gazing and was afraid that she would detect that he was awake. It was a relief when he heard her whisper: “It’s too bad of you, Vashti; he’d just reached the turning-point. You’re as irresponsible as a child when your moods take you.”
A second chair was drawn up. Vashti had made no reply. Mrs. Sheerug commenced speaking again: “Hal——”
“Hal’s gone out. I suppose you’ve been——”
“Yes, quarreling. My fault, as usual.”
The older woman’s tones became earnest “My dear, you’re not good to my boy. How much longer is it going to last? You’re not—not a safe woman for a man like Hal. He needs some one more loving; you could never make him a good wife. Your profession—I wish you’d give him up.” Then, after a pause, “Won’t you?”
The little boy listened as eagerly as Hal’s mother for the reply. At last it came, “I wish I could.”
He sat up. She saw the reproach in his eyes, but she gave no sign. “Hulloa! Wakened? Time you were in bed, old fellow.”
He was conscious that she was using him as a barrier between herself and further conversation. Rising, she carried him over to the high four-poster bed. While she tucked him in, he could hear the clinking of a glass, and knew that his tribulations had recommenced. Mrs. Sheerug crossed from the fireplace: “Here’s another drink of the nice medicine.”
He buried his face in the pillow. He didn’t want to get better. He wanted to die and to make people sorry.
“Teddy,” it was her voice, “Teddy, if you take it, I’ll sing to you. Do it for my sake.”
She turned to Mrs. Sheerug. “He will if I sing to him. You accompany me. He says it’s a promise.”
She stood beside the pillow holding his hand. Over by the window the faery-godmother was taking her seat; stars peeped through the harp-strings curiously. What happened next was like arms spread under him, carrying him away and away. “Oh, rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him.” Her voice sprang up like a strong white bird; at every beat of its wings the harp-strings hummed like the weak wings of smaller birds following. “Oh, rest in the Lord”—the white bird rose higher with a braver confidence and the little birds took courage, plunging deeper into the grave and gentle stillness. “Oh, rest in the Lord”—it was like a sigh of contentment traveling back from prepared places out of sight. The room grew silent.
It was Vashti who had moved. She bent over him, “I’m going.” He stretched out his arms, but they failed to reach her. At the door Mrs. Sheerug stood and stayed her. Vashti halted, very proud and sweet. “What is it? You said I wasn’t safe. You can tell Hal he’s free—I won’t trouble him.”
Mrs. Sheerug caught her by the hands and tried to draw her to her. “I was mistaken, Vashti; you’re good. You can always make me forgive you: you could make any one love you when you’re singing.”
Vashti shook her head. “I’m not good. I’m wicked.” The older woman tried to reach up to kiss her. Again Vashti shook her head, “Not to-night.”
The medicine had been taken. By the easel a shaded lamp had been lighted—lighted for hours. It must be very late; the faery-godmother still worked, sorting her wools and pushing her needle back and forth, clothing Joseph in the presence of Potiphar’s wife. Every now and then she sighed. Sometimes she turned and listened to catch the regular breathing of the little boy whom she supposed to be sleeping. Presently she rose and undressed. The lamp went out In the darkness Teddy could hear her tossing; then she seemed to forget her troubles.
But he lay and remembered. Vashti had asked him to marry her. Perhaps she had not meant it. How long would it take to become a man? Did little boys ever marry grown ladies?
When his father entered Teddy was eating his breakfast propped up in bed, balancing a tray on his humped-up legs.
“Well, shrimp, you seem to have had a lucky tumble. Can’t say there seems to be much the matter.”
A large bite of hot buttered toast threatened to impede conversation. “It’s the brown stuff,” Teddy mumbled; “she wanted to see if it ’ud make me wet.”
“Kind of vivisection, eh? And did it?”
“All over—like in a bath playing ship-wrecked sailors.” The excavation of an egg absorbed the little boy’s attention. His father seated himself on the edge of the bed. He was a large childish man, unconsciously unconventional His brown velvet jacket smelt strongly of tobacco and varnish. It was spotted with bright colors, especially on the left sleeve between the wrist and elbow, where he had tested his paints instead of on his palette. His trousers bagged at the knees from neglect rather than from wear; their shabbiness was made up for by an extravagant waistcoat, sprigged with lilac. Double-breasted and cut low in a V shape, it exposed a soft silk shirt and a large red tie with loosely flowing ends. His head was magnificent—the head of a rebel enthusiast, too impatient to become a leader of men. It was broad in the forehead and heavy with a mane of coal-black ringlets. His mouth was handsome—a rare thing in a man. His nose was roughly molded, Cromwellian, giving to his face a look of rude strength and purpose. A tuft of hair immediately beneath his lower lip bore the same relation to his mustache that a tail bears to a kite—it lent to his expression balance. It was his eyes that astonished—they ought to have been fiercely brown to be in keeping with the rest of his gypsy appearance; instead they were a clear gray, as though with gazing into cloudy distances, as are the eyes of men who live by seafaring.
He had made repeated efforts to curb his picturesqueness; he knew that it didn’t pay in an age when the ideal for males is to be undecorative. He knew that his appearance appealed as affectation and bred distrust in the minds of the escutcheoned tradesmen who are England’s art patrons. When they came to confer a favor, they liked to find a gentlemanly shopkeeper—not a Phoenician pirate, with a voice like a gale. His untamedness impressed them as immorality. He always felt that they left him thoroughly convinced that he and Dearie were not married.
Whatever editors, art patrons and publishers might think about James Gurney, Teddy followed in his mother’s footsteps: to him James Gurney was Jimmie Boy, the biggest-hearted companion that a son ever had—a father of whom to be inordinately proud. There was no one as great as his father, no one as clever, no one as splendid to look at in the whole wide world. When he walked down the street, holding his father’s hand, he liked to fancy that people stared after him for his daring, just as they would have stared had he walked with his hand in the mane of a shaggy lion. It was wonderful to be friends with a father so fierce looking. And then his father treated him as a brother artist and borrowed notions from him—really did, without pretense; he’d seen the notions carried out in illustrations. His father had come to borrow from him now.
“Any ideas this morning, partner—any ideas that you don’t want yourself?”
Teddy hitched himself upon the pillow, trying to look as grave and important as if he wore spectacles. “Yes. A room like this, only lonely with a fire burning and an old, old woman sitting over there.” He pointed to the window and the gilded harp. “I’d let her be playing, Daddy; and a big white bird, that you can see through, must be beating its wings against the panes, trying and always trying to get out.”
“A ghost bird?” his father suggested.
“Don’t know—just a big white bird and a woman so old that she might be dead.”
“What’s the meaning of the bird, old chap? Dreams, or hopes, or memories—something like that?”
Teddy could find nothing more in the egg. “Don’t know; that’s the way I saw it” He ceased to be elderly, took off his imaginary spectacles and looked up like a dog who stands wagging his tail, waiting to be patted. “Was that an idea, Daddy?”
His father nodded.
“A good idea?”
“Quite a good idea. But, oh, while I remember it, Mr. Sheerug wanted to see you. You and he must have struck up a great friendship. The faery-godmother won’t let him—says you’re not well. He seems quite upset.”
Teddy was puzzled. “Mr. Sheerug!”
“Yes, a big fat man with whom you have a secret. He followed me up the stairs and asked me to thank you for not telling.”
“Was that Mr. Sheerug?” Teddy’s eyes became large and round. “Why, he’s the mur——I mean, the man who was in the garden.”
“That’s right He carried you in when you fainted. What made you faint, Teddy?”
The little boy looked blank. If he were to tell, he would get the fat man into trouble; an aggravated murderer, living only six doors removed, would make an awkward neighbor. There was another reason why he looked blank: were he to tell his father of Mr. Sheerug’s special hobby, he would certainly be forbidden to enter Orchid Lodge, and then—why, then he might never meet Vashti. He weighed his fear against his adoration, and decided to keep silent.
His father had fallen into a brown study. He had forgotten his inquiry as to the cause of Teddy’s fainting. “Theo.”
Something important was coming. To be called Theo was a warning.
“Theo, it hasn’t happened. When it’s so difficult to earn a living, I don’t know whether we ought to be sorry or glad.”
“What hasn’t happened?”
“There’s still only you and me and, thank God, Dearie.”
“But—” the small brain was struggling to discover a meaning—“but could there have been any one else?”
The large man took the little boy’s hand. “You don’t understand. Yes, there could have been several other people; but not now.” Rising, he walked over to the window and stood there, looking out. “Perhaps it’s just as well, with a fellow like me for your father, who spends all his time in chasing clouds and won’t—can’t get on in the world.”
Teddy couldn’t see his father’s face, but he thought he knew what was the matter. If Dearie had been there, she would have slipped her arms round the big man’s neck, calling him “Her Boy,” and would have made everything happy in a second. In her absence Teddy borrowed her comforting words—he had heard them so often. “Your work’s too good,” he said emphatically. “Every great man has been neglected.”
The phrase, uttered parrot-wise by the lips of a child, stirred the man to a grim humor. He saw himself as that white bird, battering itself into exhaustion against invisible panes that shut it out from the heavens. Every time it ceased to struggle the dream music recommenced, maddening it into aspiration; the old woman, so old that she might be dead, who fingered the strings of the harp was Fate.
He stared across the wintry gardens, blackened and impoverished by frost; each one like a man’s life—curtailed, wall-surrounded, monotonously similar, yet grandly roofed with eternity. Along the walls cats crept like lean fears; trees, stripped of leaves, wove spiders’ webs with their branches. So his work was too good and every great man had been neglected! His boy said it confidently now; as he grew older he might say it with less and less sincerity.
He laughed quietly. “So you’ve picked up my polite excuse, Ted! Yes, that’s what we all say of ourselves—we failures: ’My work’s too good.’”
“But it needn’t be an excuse, Mr. Gurney. It may be the truth. I often use the same consolation.”
Mrs. Sheerug stood, a burlesque figure of untidy optimism, smiling severely in the doorway. She was clad in her muddled plum-colored dressing-gown; her gray hair was disordered and sprayed about her neck; her tired blue eyes, peering above the silver-rimmed spectacles, took in the room with twinkling merriment. She came to the foot of the bed with the ponderous dignity of a Cochin-China hen, important with feathers.
“Yes, my dear sir,” she said, “you may not know it, but I, too, consider myself a genius. I believe all my family to be geniuses—that’s why I never interfere with the liberty of my children. Even my husband, he’s a genius in his fashion—a stifled fashion, I tell him; I let him go his own way in case it may develop. Genius must not be thwarted—so we all live our lives separately in this house and—and, as I dare say you know, run into debt. There’s a kind of righteousness about that—running into debt; the present won’t acknowledge our greatness, so we make it pay for our future. But, my dear sir, I caught you indulging in self-pity. It’s the worst of all crimes. You men are always getting sorry for yourselves. Look at me—I’ve not succeeded. I ask you, do I show it?”
“If to be always smiling—-” Mr. Gurney broke off.
“This is really a remarkable meeting, Mrs. Sheerug—three geniuses in one room! Oh, yes, if Teddy’s not told you yet, he will soon: he’s quite certain that he’s going to be a very big man. Aren’t you, Teddy?”
The little boy wriggled his toes beneath the counterpane and watched them working. “I have ideas,” he said seriously.
“What did I tell you?”
Mrs. Sheerug signified by the closing of her eyes that she considered it injudicious to discuss little boys in their presence. When she opened them again it was to discuss herself.
“As between artists, Mr. Gurney, I want your frank opinion. If you don’t like my work, say so.”
“Your work!” He looked about. “Oh, this!” His eyes fell on the unfinished woolwork picture on the easel. “It has—it has a kind of power,” he said—“the power of amateurishness and oddity. You’re familiar with the impelling crudity of Blake’s sketches? Well, it’s something like that What I mean is this: your colors are all impossible, your drawing’s all wrong and there’s no attempt at accuracy. And yet—— The result is something so different from ordinary conceptions that it’s almost impressive.”
Mrs. Sheerug, not sure whether she was being praised or blamed, shook her head with dignity. “You’re trying to let me down lightly, Mr. Gurney.”
“No, I’m not and I’ll prove it Joseph is supposed to be in the process of being tempted. Well, he isn’t tempted in your picture; he’s simply scared. I don’t know whether you intended it or whether it’s the unconscious way in which your mind works, but your prize-fighting negress, in the r么le of Mrs. Potiphar threatening a Cockney consumptive in an abbreviated nightgown, is a distinctly original interpretation of the Bible story; it achieves the success that Hogarth aimed at—the effect of the grotesque. It’s the same with your Absalom. You were so prejudiced against him that you even extended your prejudice to his horse. Every time you stuck your needle in the canvas you must have murmured, ’Serve him jolly well right. So perish all sons who fight against their fathers.’ So, instead of remembering that he was a prince of Israel, you’ve made him an old-clothes blood from Whitechapel who’s got into difficulties on a hired nag at Hampstead. I think I catch your idea: you’re a Dickens writing novels in woolwork. You’re Pickwickizing the Old Testament. In its way the idea’s immense.”
Mrs. Sheerug jerked her spectacles up the incline of her nose till they covered her eyes. “If I have to leave you now, don’t think that I’m offended.”
Mrs. Sheerug went out of the room like a cottage-loaf on legs. The door closed behind her trotting, kindly figure.
Mr. Gurney turned helplessly to Teddy. “And I meant to flatter her. In a worthless way they’re good. I was trying not to tell her the worthless part of it. Believe I’ve hurt her feelings, and after all her kindness—— I’m horribly sorry.”
“Father, when people marry, must they live together always?”
The irrelevancy of the question rather startled Mr. Gurney; Teddy’s questions had a knack of being startling. “Eh! What’s that? Live together always! Why, yes, it’s better. It’s usual.”
“But must they begin from the moment they marry?”
Mr. Gurney laughed. “If they didn’t, they wouldn’t marry. It’s because they think that they’ll go on wanting to be every minute of their lives together that they do it.”
“Ah, yes.” Teddy sighed sentimentally. His sigh said plainly, “Whatever else I don’t know, I know that.” He cushioned his face against the pillow. “But what I meant,” he explained, “is supposing one hasn’t any money, and one’s father can’t give one any, and one wants to be with some one every minute, and—and very badly. Would they live together then from the beginning?”
Mr. Gurney gave up thinking about Mrs. Sheerug; Teddy’s questions grew interesting. “If any one hadn’t any money and the lady hadn’t any money, I don’t believe they’d marry. But the lady might have money.”
Teddy gave himself away completely. “But to live on her money! Oh, I don’t think I’d like that.”
His father seated himself on the bed, with one leg curled under him. “Hulloa, what’s this? Been losing your heart to Mrs. Sheerug? She’s got a husband. It won’t do, old man.”
“It isn’t Mrs. Sheerug. It’s just—just curiosity, I expect.”
No encouragement could lure him into a more explicit confession. All that day, after his father had left, he lay there with his face against the pillow, endeavoring to dis-cover a plan whereby a little boy might procure the money to marry a beautiful lady, of whom he knew comparatively nothing.
He had not seen her again. It was now four days since she had sung to him. For her sake, in the hope of her returning, he had made himself the accomplice of Mrs. Sheenes plans. By looking languid he invited the terrors of her medicines. By restraining his appetite and allowing half his meals to be carried away untasted, he gave to his supposed illness a convincing appearance of reality. Even Mrs. Sheerug, whose knowledge of boys was profound, was completely deceived by Teddy. It had never occurred to her that there was a boy in the world who could resist good food when he was hungry.
“Is your head aching? Where is it that you don’t feel better?”
“It’s just all over.”
More physic would follow. He swallowed it gladly—was willing to swallow any quantities, if it were the purchase price of at length seeing Vashti. Every day gained was a respite to his hope, during which he could listen for her coming. Perhaps her footstep in the passage would first warn him—or would it be her voice? He liked to think that any moment she might enter on tiptoe and lean across his pillow before he was aware. When in later years the deluge of love swept over him, destroying that it might recreate his world, he was astonished to find how faithfully it had been foreshadowed by this embryo passion of his childhood.
For three days Mrs. Sheerug had asked him where he ached most, and had invariably received the same answer, “It’s just all over.” Her ingenuity in prescribing had been sorely tested: she had never had such an uncomplaining victim for her remedies. However unpleasantly she experimented, she could always be sure of his murmured thanks.
Under his gentleness she began to allow her fondness to show itself. She held old-fashioned notions about children, believing that they were spoilt by too much affection. Her kind heart was continually at war with her Puritan standards of sternness; the twinkle in her eyes was always contradicting the harsh theories which her lips propounded. Sitting by her easel in the quiet room, she would carry on gossiping monologues addressed to Teddy. He gathered that in her opinion all men were born worthless; husbands were saved from the lowest depths of inferiority by the splendid women they married. All women were naturally splendid, and all bachelors so selfish as to be beneath contempt. She gave Teddy to understand that women were the only really adult people in the world; they pretended that their men were grown up as a mother plays a nursery game with children. She quoted instances to Teddy to prove her theories—indiscreet instances from her own experiences and the experiences of her friends.
“To hear me speak this way, you may wonder why I married, and why I married Alonzo of all men. Even I wondered that on the day I said yes to him, and I wondered it on the day I eloped with him, and I’ve not done wondering yet Yes, little boy, you may look at me and wonder whether I’m telling the truth, but my father was Lord Mayor of London and I could once have married anybody. I was a very pretty girl—I didn’t know how pretty then; and I had a host of suitors. I could have been a rich lady to-day with a title—but I chose Alonzo.”
“Alonzo sounds a fine name,” said Teddy. “Did he ride on a horse and carry a sword in the Lord Mayor’s Show?”
“Ride on a horse!” Mrs. Sheerug laughed gently; she was remembering. “Ride on a horse! No, he didn’t, Teddy. You see, he was called Sheerug as well as Alonzo. The Sheerug rather spoils the Alonzo, doesn’t it?”
A STRATEGY THAT FAILED
35
“Sheerug sounds kind and comfy,” murmured Teddy, trying to make the best of a disappointment.
Mrs. Sheerug smiled at him gratefully. “Yes, and just a little careless. I ran away with him because he was kind and comfy, and because he needed taking care of more than any man I ever met. He’s cost me more mothering than any child I ever——”
Teddy’s hands were tangled together; his words fell over one another with excitement. “Oh, tell me about the running. Did they follow you? And was it from the Lord Mayor’s house that you ran? And did they nearly catch you?”
Glancing above her spectacles disapprovingly, Mrs. Sheerug was recalled to the tender years of her audience. As though blaming the little boy for having listened, she said severely: “A silly old woman like myself says many things that you mustn’t remember, Teddy.”
On the morning of the fourth day she arrived at a new diagnosis of his puzzling malady. He knew she had directly she entered: her gray hair was combed back from her forehead and was quite orderly; she had abandoned her plum-colored dressing-gown. She halted at the foot of the bed and surveyed him.
“You rather like me?”
“Very much.”
“And you didn’t at first?”
He was too polite to acquiesce.
“And you don’t want to leave me?”
He looked confused. “Not unless you want—— Not until I’m well.”
A little gurgling laugh escaped her; it seemed to have been forced up under high pressure.
“You’ve been playing the old soldier, young man. Took me in completely. But I’m a woman, and I always, always find out.”
She shook her finger at him and stood staring across the high wall that was the foot of the bed. As she stared she kept on nodding, like the wife of a mandarin who had picked up the habit from her husband. Two fingers, spread apart, were pressed against the corners of her mouth to prevent it from widening to a smile.
“Humph!” she gave a jab to a hairpin which helped to fasten the knob at the back of her head. “Humph! I’ve been nicely had.” Then to Teddy: “We’ll get you well slowly. Now I’m going to fetch your clothes and you’ve got to dress.”
Clad as far as his shirt and knickerbockers, with a counterpane rolled about him, he was carried downstairs.
In the long dilapidated room that they entered the thin and the fat man were playing cards. They were too absorbed to notice that any one had entered.
“What d’you bet?” demanded the fat man.
“Ten thousand,” Mr. Hughes answered promptly.
“I’ll see you and raise you ten thousand. What’ve you got?”
Mr. Hughes threw down three aces; the fat man exposed a full house. “You’re twenty thousand down, Mr. Ooze.”
“Twenty thousand what?” asked Mrs. Sheerug contemptuously.
“Pounds,” Mr. Hughes acknowledged sheepishly. “Twenty thousand pounds, that’s wot I’ve lost—and it isn’t lunch time. ’urried into the world—that’s wot I was—that’s ’ow my bad luck started. You couldn’t h’expect nothing of a man ’oo was born in a ’ansom-cab.”
“You babies!” Mrs. Sheerug shifted her spectacles higher up her nose. “You know you never pay. It doesn’t matter whether you play for millions or farthings. Why don’t you work?”
When they had left, she made Teddy comfortable in a big armchair. Before she went about her household duties, she bent down and whispered: “No one shall ever know that you pretended. I’m—I’m even glad of it. Oh, we women, how we like to be loved by you useless men!”
In the conducting of a first love-affair one inevitably bungles. When the young gentleman in love happens to be older than the lady, his lack of finesse may be forgiven by her still greater inexperience. When the young gentleman is considerably less than half his fianc茅e’s years and, moreover, she is an expert in courtship by reason of many suitors, the case calls for the utmost delicacy.
Teddy was keenly sensitive to the precariousness of his situation. He was aware that, if he confessed himself, there wasn’t a living soul would take him seriously. Even Dearie and Jimmie Boy, to whom he told almost everything, would laugh at him. It made him feel very lonely; it was bard to think that you had to be laughed at just because you were young. Of course ordinary boys, who were going to be greengrocers or policemen when they grew up, didn’t fall in love; but boys who already felt the shadow of future greatness brooding over them might. In fact, such boys were just the sort of boys to pine away and die if their love went unrequited—the sort of fine-natured boys who, whether love came to them at nine or twenty, could love only once.
Here he was secretly engaged to Vashti and threatened by many unknown rivals. He didn’t know her surname and he didn’t know her address. He had to find her; when he found her he wasn’t sure what he ought to do with her. But find her he must. Four days had passed since she had accepted his hand. If he were not to lose her, he must certainly get into communication with her. How? To make the most discreet inquiries of so magic a person as Mrs. Sheerug would be to tell her everything. If she knew everything, she might not want him in her house, for she believed that he had feigned illness solely out of fondness for herself. The only other person to whom he could turn was Mr. Sheerug, with whom already he shared one guilty secret; but from this house of lightning arrivals and departures Mr. Sheerug had vanished—vanished as completely as if he had mounted on a broomstick and been whisked off into thin air. Teddy did not discover this till lunch.
Lunch was a typically Sheerugesque makeshift, consisting of boiled Spanish onions, sardines and cream-puffs. It was served in a dark room, like a Teniers’ interior, with plates lining the walls arranged on shelves. There was a door at either end, one leading into the kitchen, the other into the hall. When one of these doors banged, which it did quite frequently, a plate fell down. Perhaps it was to economize on this constant toll of breakages that Mrs. Sheerug used enamel-ware on her table. The table had a frowsy appearance, as though the person who had set the breakfast had forgotten to clear away the last night’s supper, and the person who had set the lunch had been equally careless about the breakfast. Mrs. Sheerug explained: “I always keep it set, my dear; we’re so irregular and it saves worry when our friends drop in at odd seasons.”
This room, as was the case with half the rooms in the house, had steps leading down to it, the floor of the hall being on a higher level. Whether it was that the house had muddled itself into odd angles and useless passages under the influence of Mrs. Sheerug’s tenancy, or that the mazelike originality of its architecture had effected the pattern of her character, there could be no doubt that Orchid Lodge, with its rambling spaciousness, awkward comfort, and dusty hospitality, was the exact replica in bricks and mortar of its mistress’s personality.
“What’s the matter, Teddy? Don’t you like Spanish onions? You’ll have to make yourself like them. They’re good for you. I’ve known them cure consumption.”
“I haven’t got consumption.”
“But why don’t you eat them? You keep looking about you as if you’d lost something.”
“I was wondering whether Mr. Sheerug was coming.”
She rested her fork on her plate, tapping with it and gazing at him. “Well, I never! You’re a queer child for scattering your affections. You’re the first little boy I ever knew to take a fancy to Alonzo. He’s so silent and looks so gruff.”
Teddy laughed. “But he talks to me. When shall I see him again?”
“Upon my soul! What’s the man done to you? I don’t know, Teddy—I never do know when I’m going to see him. He goes away to earn money—that’s what men are made for—and he stays away sometimes for a week and sometimes for months; it all depends on how long he takes to find it There have been times,” she raised her voice with a note of pride, “when my husband has come back a very rich man. Once, for almost a year, we lived in West Kensington and kept our carriage. But there have been times——-” She left the sentence unended and shook her head. “It’s ups and downs, Teddy; and if we’re kind when we have money, the good Lord provides for us when we haven’t. ’Tisn’t money, it’s the heart inside us that makes us happy.”
Teddy wasn’t paying attention to the faery-godmother’s philosophy; he was thinking of Alonzo Sheerug, who had gone away to earn money. He pictured him as a fat explorer, panting off into a wilderness with a pail. When the pail was filled, and not until it was filled, he would return to his wife. That was what men were made for—to be fetch-and-carry persons. Teddy was thinking that if he could reach Mr. Sheerug, he would ask him to carry an extra bucket.
That an interval might elapse between his flow of questions, he finished his Spanish onion. Then, “I’d like to write him a question if you’d send it.”
“Oh, come!” She patted his hand. “There’s no question that you could ask him that I couldn’t answer. He’s only a man.”
Teddy knew that he would have to ask her something; so he asked her a question, but not the question. “Who is Hal?”
“My son.”
“Does he like the lady who sang in the bedroom?”
“He——” She frowned. “You’re too curious, Teddy; you want to know too much. See, here’s Harriet waiting to take the dishes and get on with her work.”
Mrs. Sheerug rose and trundled up the steps. Since it was she who had invited his curiosity, Teddy felt a little crestfallen at the injustice of her rebuff. He was preparing to follow her, when he caught the red-headed giantess from the kitchen winking at him as though she would squeeze her eye out of its socket. In her frantic efforts to attract his notice her entire face was convulsed. As the swish of Mrs. Sheerug’s skirts grew faint across the hall, the girl tiptoed over to Teddy and stood staring at him with her fists planted firmly on the table. Slowly she bent down—so slowly that he wondered what was coming.
“Does ’e like ’er!” she whispered scornfully. “Why, ’e loves ’er, you little Gubbins. Wot on h’earth possessed yer ter go and h’arsk ’is ’eart-sick ma a h’idiot quesching like that?”
To be twice blamed for a fault which had not been of his own choosing was too much. There was anger as well as a hint of tears in his voice when he answered, “My name isn’t Gubbins. And it wasn’t an idiot question. She made me ask her something, so I asked her that.”
The girl wagged her head with an immense display of tragedy. His anger seemed only to deepen her despondency. “H’it’s tumble,” she sighed, “tumble, h’all this business abart love. ’Ere’s h’every one wantin’ some one ter love ’em, and some of ’em is lovin’ the wrong pusson, and some of ’em is bein’ loved by three or four, and some-some of h’us ain’t got no one. H’it don’t look as though we h’ever shall ’ave. If I wuz Gawd——” She checked herself, awed by the Irreverence of her supposition. “If I wuz Gawd,” she repeated, lowering her voice, “I’d come right darn from ’eaven and sort awt the proper couples. H’I wouldn’t loll around with them there h’angels till h’every gal ’ad got ‘er feller. Gawd ought ter ’ave been a woman, I tell yer strite. If ’E wuz, things wouldn’t be in this ’ere muddle. A she-Gawd wouldn’t let h’us maike such fools of h’ourselves, if you’ll h’excuse me strong lang-widge.”
Teddy stared at her. It wasn’t her “strong langwidge” that made him stare; it was the confession that her words implied. “You’re—you’re in love?”
She jerked up her head defiantly. “In love! Yus, I’m in love. And ’oo isn’t?”
He watched her clearing the table; when that was done, he followed her into the kitchen. The idea that she was suffering from his complaint fascinated him. She of all persons should be able to tell him how to proceed in the matter.
She paused in her washing of the dishes; across her shoulder she had caught him looking at her. “You may well stare,” she said. “H’I’m a cureehosity, I h’am. I wuz left.” She nodded impressively.
He didn’t understand, but he knew the information was supposed to be staggering. “Left!”
“Yus. I wuz left—left h’at a work’ouse and brought h’up in a h’orphanage. P’raps I never wuz born. P’raps I never ’ad no parents. There’s no one can say. I wuz found on a doorstep, all finely dressed and tied h’up in a fish-basket—just left. H’I’m different from h’other gals, h’I am. My ma may ’ave been a queen—there’s never no tellin’.”
Harriet sank into a chair. Supporting her chin in her hand, she gazed wistfully into the fire. “Wot is it that yer wants wiv me, Gubbins?”
“Is it very difficult to get married?” he faltered.
She nodded. “One ‘as ter ’ave money. If a man didn’t ’ave no money, ’is wife would ’ave ter go out charing. She wouldn’t like that.”
“What’s the least a man ought to have?”
She deliberated. “Depends on the lady. If it wuz me, I should want five pounds. But look ’ere, wot maikes yer h’arsk so many queschings? Surely a little chap like you ain’t in love?”
He flushed. “Five pounds! But wouldn’t three be enough if two people were very, very much in love?”
“Five pounds, Gubbins.” She rose from her chair and went back to her dishes. “Not a penny less. I knows wot I’m talkin’ abart My ma wuz a queen, p’raps; ter h’offer a lady less would be a h’insult.”
It happened in a comfortable room on the ground floor, looking out into the garden. All afternoon he had been puzzling over what Harriet had told him. Mrs. Sheerug sat by the fire knitting; he dared not question her.
Muted by garden walls and distance, a muffin-man passed up and down the streets, ringing his bell and crying to the night like a troubadour in search of romance. He crouched against the window, watching the winter dusk come drifting down. While watching, he fell asleep.
As though he had been coldly touched, he awoke startled, all his senses on edge. On the other side of the glass, peering in, standing directly over him, was a figure which he recognized as Harriet’s. At first he thought that she was trying to attract his attention; then he saw that she seemed unaware of him and that her attention was held by something beyond. A voice broke the stillness. It must have been that same voice that had roused him.
“My God, I’m wretched! For years it’s been always the same: the restlessness when I’m with her; the heartache when I’m without her. She won’t send me away and she won’t have me, and—and I haven’t the strength to go away myself. No, it isn’t strength. It’s something that I can’t tell even to you. Something that keeps me tortured and binds me to her.”
Scarcely daring to stir, Teddy turned his eyes away from Harriet, and stared into the darkness of the room. The air was tense with tragedy. In the flickering half-circle of firelight a man was crouched against the armchair—kneeling like a child with his head in the faery-godmother’s lap. He was sobbing. Teddy had heard his mother cry; this was different. There was shame in the man’s crying and the dry choking sound of a horrible effort to regain self-mastery. The faery-godmother bent above him. Teddy could see the glint of her spectacles. She was whispering with her cheek against the flaxen head. The voice went on despairingly.
“Sometimes I wonder whether I do love her. Sometimes I feel hard and cold, so that I wouldn’t care if it were all ended. Sometimes I almost hate her. I want to start afresh—but I haven’t the courage. I know myself. If I were certain that I’d lost her, I should begin to idealize her as I did at first. God, if I could only forget!”
“My dear! My dear!” Mrs. Sheerug’s voice was broken. Her tired hands wandered over him, patting and caressing. “My poor Hal! To think that any woman should dare to use you so and that I can’t prevent it! Why, Hal, if I could bear your burdens, and see you glad, and hear your laughter in the house, I’d—I’d die for you, Hal, to have you young and happy as you were. Doesn’t it mean anything to you that your mother can love you like that?”
He raised his face and put his arms about her neck. “I haven’t been good to you, mother. It’s like you to say that I have; but I haven’t. I’ve ignored you and given the best of myself to some one for whom it has no value. I’ve been sharp and irritable to you. You’ve wanted to ask questions—you had a right to ask questions; I’ve kept you at arm’s length. You’ve wanted to do what you’re doing now—to hold me close and show me that you cared; and I’ve—I’ve felt like striking you. That’s the way with a man when he’s pitied. You know I have.”
The gray head nodded. “But I’ve always understood, and—and you don’t want to strike me any longer.”
“You’re dearer than any woman in the world.”
“Dearer, but not so much desired.” She drew back from him, holding his face between her hands. “Hal, you’re my son, and you must listen to me. Perhaps I’m only a prejudiced old woman, years behind the times and jealous for my son’s happiness. Put it down to that, Hal; but let me have my say out. When I was young, girls didn’t treat men as Vashti treats you. If they loved a man, they married him. If they didn’t love him, they told him. They didn’t play fast and loose with him, and take presents from him, and keep him in suspense, and waste his power of hoping. It’s the finest moment in a good girl’s life when a good man puts his life in her hands. If a girl can’t appreciate that, there’s something wrong with her—something so wrong that she can never make the most persistent lover happy. Vashti’s beautiful on the outside and she’s talented, but—but she’s not wholesome.”
There was a pause full of unspoken pleadings and threatenings. The man jerked sharply away from his mother. Her hands slipped from his face to his shoulders. They stayed there clinging to him. His attitude was alert with offense.
“Shall I go on?” she asked tremulously.
His answer came grimly. “Go on.”
“It’s the truth I’m telling you, Hal—the truth, as any one can see it except yourself. Beneath her charm she’s cold and selfish. Selfishness is like frost; it kills everything. In time it would kill your passion. She’s gracious till she gets a man in her power, then she’s capricious. You haven’t told me what she’s done to you, my dear. I’m a woman; I can guess—I can guess. She doesn’t love you. She loves to be loved; she never thinks of loving in return. She’s kept you begging like a dog—you, who are my son, of whom any girl might be proud. Perhaps you think that, if she were your wife, it would make a difference. It wouldn’t. You’d spend all your life sitting up like a dog, waiting for her to find time to pet you. You’re my son—the best son a mother ever had. It’s a woman’s business to worship her man, even though she blinds herself to do it You shan’t be a vain woman’s plaything.”
She waited for him to say something. She would have preferred the most brutal anger to this silence. It struck her down. He knelt before her rigid, breathing heavily, his face hard and set.
She spoke again, slowly. “If ever Vashti were to accept you, it would be the worst day’s work. The gods you worship are different. Hers are—hers are worthless.”
He sprang to his feet, pushing aside his mother’s hand. His voice was low and stabbing. “Worthless! I won’t hear you say that. You don’t know—don’t understand. I ought to have gone on keeping this to myself—ought not to have spoken to you. No, don’t touch me. She’s good, I tell you. It’s my fault if I’m such a fool that I can’t make her care.”
He spoke like a man in doubt, anxious to convince himself.
“It’s not your fault, Hal. The finest years of life! Could any man give more? You’re belittling yourself that you may defend her. You’re the little baby I carried in my bosom. I watched you grow up. I know you—all your strength and weakness. You’re the kind of man for whom love is as necessary as bread. Where there’s no kindness, you flicker out You lose your confidence with her and her friends; their flippancy stifles you. I don’t even doubt that you appear a fool. She’s a beautiful, heartless vampire; if she married you, she’d absorb your personality and leave you shrunken—a nonentity. She’s no standards, no religion, no sense of fairness; she wants luxury and a career and independence—and she wants you as well. Doesn’t want you as a comrade, but as an et cetera. She’s willing to accept all love’s privileges, none of its duties. She has plenty of self-pity, but no tenderness. Oh, my poor, poor Hal, what is it that you love in her? Is it her unresponsiveness?”
She seized both his hands, dragging herself up so that she leaned against his breast. “Hal, I’m afraid for you.” She kissed his mouth. “She’ll make you bad. She will. Oh, I know it. She’ll break your heart and appear all the time to be good herself. Can’t you see what your life would be with her?”
“I can see what it would be without her,” he said dully.
His mother’s voice fell flat “You can’t see that. God hides the future. There are good girls in the world. Life for you with her would be bitterness, while she went on smiling. She’s a woman who’ll always have a man in love with her—always a different man. She’ll never mean any harm, but every affection she breathes on will lose its freshness. She’s given you your chance to free yourself.”
She tried to draw him down to her. “Take it,” she urged.
He stooped, smoothed back the gray hair and kissed her wrinkled forehead.
“You’re going to?”
He loosed himself. “Mother, it’s shameful that we should speak so of a girl.”
Crossing the room, he opened the door and halted on the point of departure.
“Are you going to?”
“I can’t There are things I haven’t told you.”
As the door closed, she extended her arms to him, then buried her face in her hands. When the sound of his footsteps had died out utterly, she followed.
Teddy turned from gazing into the darkened room. The window was empty. The other silent witness had departed.
As if coming to uphold him in his allegiance to romance, the Invincible Armada of dreamers sailed out: cresting the sullen horizon of housetops, the white moon swam into the heavens—the admiral ship of illusion, with lesser moons of faint stars following. He remembered that through all his years that white fleet of stars would be watching, riding steadily at anchor. Nothing of bitterness could sink one ship of that celestial armada. He clenched his hands. And nothing that he might hear of bitterness should sink one hope of his great belief in the goodness and kindness of the world.
His exit from Orchid Lodge came hurriedly. Mrs. Sheerug had received a letter telling her that her daughter, Madge, and her younger son, Ruddy, were returning from the visit they had been paying. Consequently, one foggy winter’s afternoon with a tip of four shillings from Hal and of half-a-crown from Mrs. Sheerug—six shillings and sixpence in all towards the necessary five pounds—he was wrapped up and conducted the six doors lower down in the charge of Harriet.
It was as though a story-book had been snatched from his hands when he was halfway through the adventure. There were so many things that he wanted to know. It seemed to him that he had lost sight of Vashti for ever.
Jane, his own servant, admitted them. She was greatly excited, but not by his advent. Drawing Harriet into the hall, she at once began to make her her confidante.
“It wasn’t as though they ’adn’t been ’appy,” Jane was saying. “’Appy I They was that ’appy they got on my nerves. There was times when it was fair sick’ning to listen to ’em. Give me the pip, that’s wot it did. It was ’Dearie this’ and ’Jimmie Boy that,’ till it made a unmarried girl that angry she wanted to knock their ‘eads. Silly, I calls it, to be ’ave like that downstairs. Well, that’s ‘ow it was till the missus takes ill, and wot we’d expected didn’t ‘appen. Master Teddy goes ter stay with you; ‘is dear ma is safe in bed; and then she comes, this woman as says she wants to ’ave ‘er portrait painted. ’Er portrait painted!”
Jane beat her hands and sniffed derisively. Catching Teddy’s eye, she lowered her voice and bent nearer to Harriet “’Er portrait painted! It was all me eye and Betty Martin. Direckly I saw ’er I knew that, and I says to myself, ’Yer portrait painted! A fat lot you wants of that, my fine lady.’ And so it’s turned out When I opened the door to ’er fust, I nearly closed it in ’er face, she looked that daingerous. And there’s the missus on ’er back upstairs as flat as a pancake. I can’t tell ’er a thing of wot I suspeck.”
“Men’s all alike,” sighed Harriet, as though speaking out of a bitter marriage experience. “H’it’s always the newest skirt that attracks.”
Jane looked up sharply. It seemed to her that Teddy had grown too attentive. “‘Ere, Miss ’arriet, let’s go down to my kitching and talk this over. More private,” she added significantly. Then to Teddy, who was following, “No, you don’t, Master Theo. You stay ’ere till we comes back.”
High up in the darkness a door opened. Footsteps. They were descending. Huddling himself into an angle of the wall, he waited. A strange woman in a blue starched dress was coming down. As she passed him, he stretched out his hand, “If you please——”
She jumped away, startled and angry. “What a fright you did give me, hiding and snatching at me like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry! But who are you?”
“I’m Teddy. Where’s—where’s mother?”
The woman’s voice became quiet and professional. “She’s sleeping. When she wakes, I’ll send for you. She’s not been well. I must go now.”
He listened to her footsteps till they died out in the basement. He must find his father. Cautiously he set to work, opening doors, peeping into darkened rooms and whispering, “It’s only Teddy.”
Indoors he had searched everywhere; only one other place was left
The garden was a brooding sea of yellow mist, obscured and featureless. Trees stood up vaguely stark, like cowled skeletons.
He groped his way down the path. Once he strayed on to the lawn and lost himself; it was only by feeling the gravel beneath his tread that he could be sure of his direction. A light loomed out of the darkness—the faintest blur, far above his head. It strengthened as he drew nearer. Stretching out his hands, he touched ivy. Following the wall, he came to a door, and raised the latch.
Inside the stable he held his breath. Stacked against the stalls were canvases: some of them blank; some of them the failures of finished work; others big compositions which were set aside till the artist’s enthusiasm should again be kindled. Leading out of the stable into the converted loft was a rickety stairway and a trap-door. Teddy could not see these things; through familiarity he was aware of their presence.
Voices! One low and grumbling, the other fluty and high up. Then a snatch of laughter. Was there any truth in what Jane had said? The trap-door was heavy. Placing his hands beneath it, he pushed and flung it back. It fell with a clatter. He stood white and trembling, dazzled by the glare, only his head showing.
“What on earth!”
Some one rose from a chair so hurriedly that it toppled over. Then the same voice exclaimed in a glad tone, “Why, it’s the shrimp!”
His father’s arms were about him, lifting him up. Teddy buried his face against the velvet jacket. Though he had been deaf and blind, he would have recognized his father by the friendly smell of tobacco and varnish. Because of that smell he felt that his father was unaltered.
“Turned you out, old chap, did they? I didn’t know you were coming. Perhaps Jane told me. I’ve been having one of my inspirations, Teddy—hard at it every moment while the light lasted. I’d be at it now, if this infernal fog hadn’t stopped me.” He tried to raise the boy’s face from his shoulder. “Want to see what I’ve been doing?”
Teddy felt himself a traitor. His father had had an inspiration—that accounted for Jane’s suspicions and for anything awkward that had occurred. It was always when his father’s soul groped nearest heaven that his earthly manners were at their worst. Odd! Teddy couldn’t understand it; a person like Jane, who wasn’t even related, could understand it still less. But he had let himself sink to Jane’s level. If he had wanted to confess, he couldn’t have told precisely what it was that he had dreaded. So in reply to all coaxing he hid his face deeper in the shoulder of the velvet jacket. Its smoky, varnishy, familiar smell gave him comfort: it seemed to forgive him without words.
“Frightened?” his father questioned. “You were always too sensitive, weren’t you? I oughtn’t to have forgotten you like that. But—I say, Teddy, look up, old man. I really had something to make me forget.”
“I think he’ll look up for me.”
At sound of that voice, before the sentence was ended, he had looked up.
“There!”
Her laughter rang through the raftered room like the shivering of silver bells.
Holding out his hands to her, Teddy struggled to free himself. When force failed, he leaned his cheek against his father’s, “Jimmie Boy, dear Jimmie Boy, let me down.”
“Hulloal What’s this?”
Combing his fingers through his curly black hair, his father looked on, humorously perplexed by this frantic reunion of his son and the strange lady. She bent tenderly, pressing his hands against her lips and holding him to her breast.
“I never, never thought I’d find you,” he was explaining, “never in the world. I searched everywhere. I was always hoping you’d come back. When you didn’t, I tried to ask Harriet, and I nearly asked Mrs. Sheerug.”
“Ah, she wouldn’t tell you,” the lady said.
“I know all about marriage now,” he whispered.
“You do?”
He clapped his hands. “Harriet told me.”
His father interrupted. “How did you and Teddy come to meet, Miss Jodrell?”
Vashti glanced up; her eyes slanted and flashed mischief. It was quite true; any woman would have shared Jane’s opinion—Vashti’s look was “daingerous” when it dwelt on a man. It lured, beckoned and caressed. It hinted at unspoken tenderness. It seemed to say gladly, “At last we are together. I understand you as no other woman can.” It was especially dangerous now, when the bronze hair shone beneath the gray breast of a bird, the red lips were parted in kindness, and the white throat, like a swan floating proudly, swayed delicately above ermine furs. In the studio with its hint of the exotic, its canvases where pale figures raced through woodlands, its infinite yearning after beauty, its red fire burning, swinging lamps and gaping chairs, and against the window the muffled silence, Vashti looked like the materialization of a man’s desire. One arm was flung about the boy, her face leant against his shoulder, brooding out across the narrow distance at the man’s.
“How did we meet!” she echoed. “How does any one meet? In a fog, by accident, after loneliness. Sometimes it’s for better; sometimes it’s for worse. One never knows until the end.” She stood up and drew her wraps about her, snuggling her chin against her furs. “I ought to be going now; your wife must be needing you, Mr. Gurney—— Oh, well, if you want to see me out.”
She dropped to her knees beside Teddy. “Good-by, little champion. Some day you and I will go away together and you must tell me all that you learnt from Harriet about—about our secret.”
When they had vanished through the hole in the floor, Teddy tiptoed over to the trap-door and peered down. With a glance across his shoulder, his father signaled to him not to follow. He ran to the window to get one last glimpse of her, but the fog prevented; all he could see was the moving of two disappearing shadows. He heard the sound of their footsteps growing fainter, and less certain on the gravel.
Left to himself, he pulled from his knickerbockers’ pocket a knotted handkerchief. Undoing it, he counted its contents: Hal’s four shillings and Mrs. Sheerug’s half-a-crown. He smiled seriously. Sitting down on the floor, he spread out the coins to make sure that he hadn’t lost any of them. Six-and-sixpence! To grown people it might not seem wealth; to him it was the beginning of five pounds.
But, my old pirate, who is she?
The orderliness of the room had been carried to excess; it suggested the austere orderliness of death. Life is untidy; it has no time for folded hands. The room’s garnished aspect had the chill of unkind preparedness.
From the window a bar of sunlight streamed across a woman lying on a white, unruffled bed. Its brilliance revealed the deep hollows of her eyes; they were like violets springing up in wells of ivory. Her arms, withdrawn from the sheets, stretched straightly by her side; the fingers were bloodless, as if molded from wax. Her head, which was narrow and shapely, lay cushioned on a mass of chestnut hair. She had the purged voluptuousness of one of Rossetti’s women who had turned saint. Her valiant mouth was smiling. Only her eyes and mouth, of all her body, seemed alive. She had spoken with effort. It was as though the bar of gold, which fell across her breast, was pinning her to the bed. Some such thought must have occurred to the man who was standing astraddle and bowed before the fire. He crossed the room and commenced to pull down the blind.
“Don’t, please. There’s to be no lowering of blinds—not yet.”
He paused rigid, as though he had been stabbed; then went slowly back to his old position before the fire.
“I didn’t mean to say it,” she whispered pleadingly. “I’m not going to die, Jimmie Boy—not so long as you need me. If I were lying here dead and you were to call, I—I should get up and come to you, Jimmie Boy. ’Dearie, I say unto thee arise’—that’s what you’d say, I expect, like Christ to the daughter of Jairus—‘Dearie, I say unto thee arise.’”
A third person, who had been sitting on the counterpane, playing with her hand, looked up. “And would you if I said it?”
“Perhaps, but I’m not going to give you the chance—not yet.”
“I’m glad,” sighed the little boy, “’cause, you know, I might forget the words.”
The ghost of a laugh escaped the woman’s lips and quickly spent itself. “Jimmie Boy’s glad too, only he’s such an old Awkward, he won’t tell. He hates being laughed at, even by his wife.”
The man raised his shaggy head. His voice sounded gruff and furious. “If you want to know, Jimmie Boy’s doing his best not to cry.”
His head jerked back upon his breast.
The woman lay still, gazing at him with adoring eyes. He cared—he was trying not to cry. She never quite knew what went on inside his head—never quite knew how to take him. When others would have said most, he was most silent He was noisy as a child over the little things of life. He did everything differently from other men. It was a proof of his genius.
In the presence of her frailty he looked more robust, more of a Phoenician pirate than ever. She gloried in his picturesque lawlessness, in the unrestraint of his gestures, in his uncouth silences. What a lover for a woman to have! As she lay there in her weakness she recalled the passion of his arms about her: how he had often hurt her with his kisses, and she had been glad. She wished that she might feel his arms about her now.
“Who is she?” she asked again.
Her question went unanswered. She turned her head wearily to the little boy. “Teddy, what’s my old pirate been doing? Who is she? You’ll tell.”
Before Teddy could answer, her husband laughed loudly. “If you’re jealous, you’re not going to die.”
The riot of relief in his voice explained his undemonstrativeness. Tears sprang into her eyes. How she had misjudged him! She rolled her head luxuriously from side to side. “You funny boy—die! How could I, when you’d be left?”
Running across the room, he sprawled himself out on the edge of the bed. Forgetting she was fragile, he leant across her breast and kissed her heavily on the mouth. She raised herself up to prolong the joy and fell back exhausted. “Oh, that was good!” she murmured. “The dear velvet jacket and the smoky smell—all that’s you! All that’s life! I’m not jealous any longer; but who is she?”
He pulled the loose ends of his tie and shook his head. “Don’t know, and that’s a fact. She just turned up and wanted to be painted. When I’d smarted, I lost my head; couldn’t stop; got carried away. Don’t know whether you’d like her, Dearie; she’s a wonderful person. Sings like a bird—sets me thinking—inspires. Work! Why, I’ve not worked so steadily since—I don’t know when. I was worried about you and glad to forget Hard luck on you, Dearie; I’m a stupid fellow to show my sorrow by stopping away. But as to who she is, seems to me that Teddy can tell you best.”
She squeezed the little boy’s hand. “Who is she, Teddy?” Teddy looked blank. “Don’t know—not exactly. She was in Mrs. Sheerug’s house with Hal, and—and then she came and sang to me in bed.”
“She did that?” His mother smiled. “She must be a good woman to love my little boy.” Then to her husband, after a moment’s reflection: “But what’s the picture?”
His face lit up with enthusiasm. “It’s going to do the trick this time. It’ll make us famous. We’ll move into a big house. You’ll have breakfast in bed with a boudoir cap, and all your gowns’ll come from Paris.”
She stroked the sleeve of his jacket affectionately. “Yes, that’s sure to happen. But what’s it all about?”
He commenced reciting, “‘She feedeth among the lilies. A garden enclosed is my sister: a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Awake, O north wind, and come thou south. Blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out.’ Catch the idea? It was mine; Teddy didn’t have a thing to do with it See what I’m driving at?”
He sat back from her to take in the effect. She drew him near again. “It sounds beautiful; but I don’t quite see all of it yet.”
He knotted his hands, trying to reduce his imagination to words. “It’s the women who aren’t like you, Dearie—the women who love themselves. They feed among lilies; the soul of love is in ’em, but they won’t let it out They’re gardens enclosed, fountains sealed, springs shut up. Now are you getting there? The symbolism of it caught me. There I have her, just as she is in her bang-up modern dress, feeding among the lilies of an Eastern garden. Everything’s heavy with fragrance, beautiful and lonely; the hot sun’s shining and nothing stirs. The windows of the harem are trellised and shut. From under clouds the north and south wind are staring and puffing their cheeks as though they’d burst. Through a locked gate in the garden you get a glimpse of an oriental street with the dust scurrying; but in my sister’s garden the air hangs listless. The fountain is dry; the well is boarded over. And here’s the last touch: halting in the street, peering in through the bars of the gate is the figure of Love. The woman doesn’t see him, though he’s whispering and beckoning. Love’s got to be stark naked; that’s how he always comes. Because he’s naked he looks the same in all ages. D’you get the contrast between Love and the girl’s modern dress? There’s where I’ll need you, Teddy.”
Teddy blushed. He spoke woefully. “But—but I’m not going to undress before her.”
For answer his father laughed.
“But can’t I have any clothes at all—not even my shirt?”
“Not even your shirt. She won’t see you, old man; in the picture she’s looking in the other direction. And as for the real live lady, we’ll paint you when she’s not on hand.”
“It’s roo-ude,” Teddy stammered. “Besides, it’s silly. Nobody eats lilies; they’re for Easter and funerals, and they’re too expensive. And—and can’t I wear just my trousers?”
His father frowned in mock displeasure. “For a boy of ideas and the son of an artist you’re surprisingly modest. Now if you were Jane I could understand it. Love would always put on trousers when he went to visit her. But you’re Dearie’s son. I’m disappointed in you, Teddy; you really ought to know more about love.”
“But I do know about love.” Teddy screwed up his mouth. “I’ve learnt from Harriet.”
“And who’s Harriet?”
“A kind of princess.”
“Pooh!” His father turned to Dearie. “What d’you think of ‘A Garden Enclosed Is My Sister’’?”
Dearie kissed his hand. “Splendid! But does the lady expect to be painted like that?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m not telling her.”
The violet eyes met his. “Dear old glorious Impractical. Perhaps she’s like Jane and’ll want her love in trousers.” Jimmie wagged his head from side to side in negation. “If I’m any judge of character, she isn’t easily shocked.” He rose and stood staring out of the window. His shadow blotted out the bar of sunlight and lay across her breast He turned. “This light’s too good to lose. I must get back to my work.”
She clung to his lips. Until he had completely vanished her eyes followed.
“Teddy, is she beautiful?” Her whisper came sharply. “The most beautiful—after you, mother, she’s the most beautiful person in the world.”
She closed her eyes and smiled. “After me! I’m glad you put me first.” She stretched out her hand and drew him to her. “Now I’m ill, he’s lonely. He’s got no one to care for him. Don’t let him be by himself.”
“Not at all, Mummie?”
“Not for a moment. You’d better go to him now.”
He was on his way to the door when she beckoned him back. “What’s she called, Teddy?”
“Vashti.”
“Vashti.” She repeated the word.
“Don’t let him be lonely, Teddy—not for a moment alone with her. Good-by, darling. Go to him now.”