BOOK I

THE TREBLE CLEF

_BOOKS BY EDWARD C. BOOTH_

BELLA

THE POST GIRL

“_The Post Girl_” is the American

title of “The Cliff End”

THE DOCTOR’S LASS

FONDIE

THE TREE OF THE GARDEN

MISS PARKWORTH

THE

TREBLE CLEF

_By_

EDWARD C. BOOTH

[Illustration: colophon]

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1924

COPYRIGHT, 1924

BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC.

BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK

To

FREDERICK AND AGNES DAWSON

IN FRIENDSHIP

CONTENTS

PAGE

I THE SAUSAGE BOY 1

II THE BEST OF FATHERS 53

III THE CHORISTER 79

IV THE ALDERMAN 118

V THE COUNCILLOR 143

VI THE ORGANIST 206

VII THE SUITOR 269

VIII THE DARK ANGEL 327

IX THE CHOICE 351

X THE CRUCIBLE 397

XI THE SACRIFICE 439

THE TREBLE CLEF

BOOK I

THE SAUSAGE BOY

1

Let us begin municipally.

On a night in late-Victorian November, whilst the years of our Lord

still moved (some say more virtuously than these) among the prim and

fast growing venerable eighteens, the Mayor of Daneborough was giving a

party.

It was not a Banquet as had been anticipated, and for that reason some

of the more substantial among the Burgesses and City Fathers disposed to

murmur, saying the Dignity of the Office was being Brought Down. It was,

in fact, a children’s Party, a juvenile fancy dress Ball, and by not a

few nonconformist electors in the Mayor’s own ward this civic

countenance of so reprehensible a practice for youth was deprecated,

being translated as a direct reflection upon his predecessor in office,

who held public happiness in as much abhorrence as a naked leg.

Throughout the ex-Mayor’s term of office no wine had reddened a goblet

nor foot slid over the waxed floor of the shrouded ballroom--which

passed a whole year swathed in holland, save when it echoed the

eloquence of frock-coated Missionaries and Temperance Orators, or

simmered with the fervour of feminine meetings for the propagation of

Christian Endeavour. But the present Mayor, who had a wife and family to

consider, was a professed churchman of the Broad School, by which

tolerantly comprehensive term he designated the whole aggregate of his

personal opinions, and held himself superior to every form of bigotry

not his own. The Party was ostensibly to celebrate the birthday of his

eldest daughter, so that in late life she should look back with pride on

having commemorated her fourteenth anniversary with civic honours, and

it might also serve (the Mayoress hoped) to furnish her family with more

social advantages than private life had hitherto provided for them.

Touching the night itself, nothing (surely) could have been more

auspicious. There was an autumnal moisture in the air; a smell of fading

leaf and smoke, mingled with a remote redolence of smouldering cartridge

paper; a dim Guy Fawkes atmosphere derived from Chinese crackers and

belated squibs that still sputtered abortively at street corners in

survival of the fiery festival, or vomited their terrifying sparks

through keyholes and letter-boxes of the unprotected, where emulators of

the great Guido had thrust them. There was a thin yellow mist--the very

emblem of municipality--that wrapped up each street lamp in a halo, like

a sick face in a blanket, and gave it a swollen and lugubrious, yet a

civic and seasonable look. Some of this mist, deposited solidly on the

street flags, damped and darkened them, so that they gleamed dully

beneath the rays of the gas lamps and the treacly light that stuck to

shop windows and open doors.

Round one of these doors in one of Daneborough’s smaller residential

streets a group of children was gathered. It had begun with the most

exemplary intent to form and to maintain a double line between the

doorway and an attendant cab, drawn up by the kerb, but under the

influence of a tense excitement and the agitated compression of numbers

it shifted its shape violently and incessantly, varying from that of a

twisted horse-shoe to no shape at all. By the fascination with which

its agitated components glued their eyes upon the door and strove among

themselves for priority of place, it was plain that events of no

ordinary importance were in progress. From time to time the

door,--which, not less agitated by unseen influences than the crowd

dependent on it, was never altogether closed,--opened mysteriously, and

a child’s head, emerging at a height somewhat lower than that of the

knob, called out anxiously to the cab-driver: “She won’t be long.”

Adding as though in communication with another and more authoritative

voice, inaudible to the expectant crowd, whose utterance it received and

transmitted: “You’re to stay there. You’re not to go. She’s got her

frock on!” To which the cabman, betraying signs of a natural moroseness

or of impatience due to delay, and expectorating belligerently on the

kerb, retorted in a voice a shade or two foggier than the night, and

less genial: “Tell ’em to hurry up, d’y’ear? Tell ’em to look sharp.

This isn’t the only job, tell ’em. I’ve got three more orders for 7-20

besides theirs. How much longer are they going to be?”

Receiving no answer from the door, which was again pushed mysteriously

to, he turned upon the horse, whose profile he scanned with an eye of

growing displeasure, venting his wrath at last in an explosive: “Hod

up!”

The horse, a flinching sad-mouthed animal of a useful nondescript colour

that could, and did, (as emergency demanded) serve with equal propriety

in a bridal coach or funeral hearse, thus vehemently awakened out of

dreams, threw up its head at the objurgation and shook all its harness

so violently as to startle cries of alarm from the group and precipitate

several of the more importunate members over the doorstep. The cabman

appeared to take this natural action of his horse as a personal affront.

Looking the animal up and down from end to end with an eye of withering

scorn, he seized it by the rein which he tugged two or three times with

vigour as if pulling a refractory doorbell, crying “Woa! What! Would

you!” Still holding it masterfully by the rein with his right hand he

threatened its evasive muzzle with a menaceful left fist that caused the

animal to brandish its head wildly aloft like a butcher’s cleaver, and

to chew the lamp-lit fog with its yellow teeth to the great dismay of

the crowd.

This altercation between the driver and his steed, which had seemed

likely to be protracted, was brought to a sudden end by the reappearance

of the forehead under the doorknob, that cried excitedly: “Hey! They’re

coming now. She’s ready. They’re wrapping her up. You’re to stay

there”--and ran back to take part in what seemed to be a ceremony of

importance. From a staircase at the immediate end of the narrow passage

now revealed to view there descended with some precipitation a

considerable party of people; adults and children confusedly mixed; all

animated by a very visible excitement. The children ran backward,

clapping their hands; the adults were flushed and voluble. One of them,

a man with a brown beard, carried in his arms a little girl enveloped in

innumerable shawls, whose face against his shoulder shone singularly

white, with a waxen polish on her brow, as though but lately resurrected

from a sickbed. It was remarked by the spectators--stirred now to such a

pitch of intensity that the foreheads of the outer flanks collided--that

the two legs depending limply from the bearer’s arms were clad in

stockings of the palest blue, and that there was lace on her frock.

Behind her came a little boy muffled up to the ears in an overcoat and

led by the hand. On his head was a black and yellow cricket cap, and

white stockings were visible beneath the great coat. An adult followed

with a highly stained cricket bat, begging the community on no account

to forget it. The little boy’s patent slippers squeaked loudly as he

walked, and though he gazed fixedly at the crowd that awaited him by the

door, it seemed to be some other self rather than his own that occupied,

perplexed, this unaccustomed raiment.

The little girl, having been deposited in the profundities of the cab

(where she made miraculous recovery of her limbs and animation in a

moment), the little boy, lifted across the humid pavement, was bestowed

beside her. There ensued an excited recapitulation of instructions,

rendered by so many voices as to resemble not unremotely some chorus

from an oratorio. “Be sure and look after her, Freddie.” “Alice, be sure

and look after Freddie.” “Has he blown his nose?” “Don’t push bat

through cab-window, now! Hold it down.” “Have they got their

hankerchers?” A sudden voice of consternation demanded “Which on ’em’s

got the invitation card?”--a timely suggestion that served to throw the

cab into convulsions, all the adults thrusting themselves through the

doorway together so that, had the sad-mouthed horse but chosen this

moment to move on, there must have been a heavy demand on the casual

ward at the Infirmary. The cards, ultimately discovered in the

right-hand pocket of the little boy’s overcoat, where some adult and

prudent hand had previously placed them, were for safety’s sake

transferred to the left, though even this procedure was not without its

disputants, one asking: “Wouldn’t he be better with them in his hand?”

and another: “Aye, but what about bat?” and a third: “Why! Let him carry

bat, and gie cards to Lucy,” and a fourth, smitten with misgivings:

“Bat! Why, what’s gotten it? Where’s bat now? Who’s seen bat? Has

Freddie got bat? As like as not he hasn’t. Show us bat, Freddie!” And

the bat being groped for at the bottom of the cab, where it had been

suffered to lapse during the quest for the cards, and publicly displayed

to the great peril of the cab-window: “Remember” (its owner was

admonished) “there’s two cards. Yours and Lucy’s. You’re not to give ’em

up to nobody while you get to Mansion House, think on, or they won’t let

you in....” At which the cabman, long smouldering under all this

retardation of affairs, succeeded in his manœuvre to seize hold of the

door handle at last, and had every appearance of being about to slam the

door with prodigious violence when his intention was frustrated by a

startling scream:

“His fingers! His fingers!”

The infection of alarm thrilled through the house party like a shudder,

and even the children and the cabdriver were visibly awed. It seemed as

if disaster had in truth befallen.

“I never seed his fingers,” the cabdriver murmured in sullen

self-defence. “Where’d he put ’em?”

“It’s not where he’d put ’em,” the originator of the scream replied,

“but where he _might_ ’a put ’em. My word, it’s gave me quite a turn.” A

chorus of outraged voices assented, “Why, no wonder. An’ me an’ all.”

“Child might have had his hand trapped off!” “Folks can never be too

careful how they shut doors when there’s children about.” “Are you all

right, Freddie?” “Hold up your hand. Which hand was it?” “His right. My

word. Might ’a lamed him.” “Doors should never be slammed, missus. Not

even if folks is in a temper. One never knows what might come of it.”

“It’s a good thing you thought to stop him in time.”

The cabdriver, humiliated and murmurous after this fruitless expenditure

of anxiety and precious time, stood holding the offending door ajar. “Is

his fingers all right now? Can I shut ’em up _this_ time? I shall never

get them other orders done to-night.” A frantic clamour of warnings,

reinforced with every gesture of command and supplication, appealing

hands and shaking fists, burst forth from the adult party. “Freddy!”

“Lucy!” “Stand back, do you hear! He’s going to shut door.” Which the

irate driver did with the suppressed violence of a blasphemy, and

clambering upon the box drew the chaff-strewn horsecloth around his

nether limbs with as much injured dignity as if it had been some minor

and dishonoured prophet’s mantle.

“The Mansion House,” he was directed from below. “The Mansion House.

Tell him the Mansion House. To the Mansion House.” The cab, rumbling

like distant thunder and grating sparks from the kerb with its iron

tyres, lunged into the mist. Moroseness, wrapped in a horse blanket, sat

statuesquely on the box; the spirit of protest thumped between the ribs

of the bony horse and poured in trumpets through its quivering nostrils;

dulled expectation and dazed excitement palpitated in the atmosphere of

mildewed cushions within the cab; pride and envy followed the cab’s

progress from behind, where the adults viewed its transit with

loquacious satisfaction and a disorderly retinue of childhood pursued

the rumbling vehicle, drawn on by heaven knows what elemental instinct

to attach themselves vicariously to greatness by any nexus however vague

and slender, and be some part--no matter how fractional or remote--of

the cherished glories of this night.

2

Of the children comprised in this animated group the greater number

belonged to that class which imparts the predominating aroma to school

feasts and Sunday schools. Their clothing, if not actually ragged, was

overworn and threadbare, and in its totality impregnated the mist with

a foist odour of garments too habitually worn. Their faces, despite the

eager freshness of youth, betrayed even to the dingy cab-lamps the

sickliness of skins too rarely cleansed; their hands displayed a dull

and questionable flesh, and finger-nails edged with deepest mourning.

They pertained in fact, to that order of youthful society in which

Friday bathnights and Saturday pennies were fitful and legendary things;

which must depend on its own exertions for all its joys in life, being

reduced to run here and there after funerals, dog-fights, street

accidents and drunken men, and chase persistently behind elusive

pleasure.

But one there was among their number--a little boy--to whom these

attributes do not apply. At one time he had been among the foremost in

the gathering, of the very germ and nucleus of its growth; a polite and

unassertive onlooker devoid of speech or motion. But with each

successive pair of hands he forfeited some part of his original

advantage, until at last he occupied a modest station on the very

outskirts of excitement, almost beyond reach of the candle-light from

the cab’s near lamp, that--when some flickering elongation of its beam

kindled his face--revealed him no true component of the throng he mildly

haunted, but a constituent foreign and detached.

Although the round cloth cap he wore, and the woollen muffler about his

neck, and the knitted gloves and belted coat and knickerbockers--all of

them black--were weekaday and new no longer, there was a care revealed

in their selection, and a polite and conscious care in his wearing of

them that hinted at home and a mother’s something more than love. Surely

that knitted muffler round his neck, its ends so scrupulously tucked

away into the breast of his little coat, had been tied by a mother’s

hands; none other would have fashioned it so deftly to the work it

should perform. His face, when now and then he turned it this way or

that--and the interest displayed on it was never of the unabashed and

public sort that marked the noisy naked curiosities of his

neighbours--his face was scarcely less clean than the super-clean face

of the little girl in the pale blue stockings who emerged tired and

triumphant from the doorway in the arms of the bearded man. It was a

delicate and fragile face; the brows finely pencilled; the eyes,

enlarged and softened by their veil of lashes, brown and wistful, whilst

a small and sensitive mouth whose lips looked as if they might have

quivered at a word confirmed the impression of a childhood still

protected from the roughness of the world, and rendered more susceptible

to it by a mother’s sheltering love.

For a brief while after the cab had rolled away, he rested pensive and

solitary on the kerb, and truth compels the admission that in his

troubled heart there even welled a yearning (shameful and unworthy of a

gentleman, he knew) to pursue this phantom and portentous vehicle so

wondrously compounded of mist and lamplight and its own rumble to the

very gateway of the Mayor’s great house in the High Gate, and there be

witness of the converging of all these individual glories, and let his

lips vicariously touch the rim of that cup of brimming happiness which

the mayoral hospitality extended not to him. Instead, he detached

himself from his meditations with a guilty start, drew up resolutely in

turn each wristlet of his knitted gloves with conscious care, and set

off briskly up the street in a course directly opposite to that the cab

had taken.

His step confirmed the impression produced by his features and apparel.

Other boys--of the sort that had pursued the cab--might have broken into

a noisy and irregular run, kicking loosely at the doorsteps as they

passed by, or leaping up to bring their mouths for shouting purposes on

a level with each letterbox, or jumping the scrapers, or whistling, or

brandishing their arms. But the little boy in the black woollen gloves

and knitted comforter displayed none of these attainments. Instead, he

kept his lips gently but firmly closed, drawing the mist and expelling

it through two small precise and sober nostrils. He walked very silently

and shadow-like, preserving the conscientious centre of the path; his

head politely yet not too proudly erect; his gloved hands closed and

held in due subjection to his sides, without looking too much to right

or left (save at a corner or street crossing, where in obedience to

maternal law he halted and made punctilious reconnaissance on all sides

of him before committing his person to the perils of the road). For was

he not Oswald Holmroyd, the son of the best of fathers, and had not his

mother’s love exhorted him never to lose sight of this fact, nor ever,

under any circumstances, to forget he was a gentleman? And if his

occupation this evening perhaps could scarcely claim to rank among the

gentlemanly callings commonly accredited, might not this be all the

better reason for striving to remember who and what he was?

As he pursued his walk, immersed in the filial task of Remembering, he

was (nevertheless) curiously susceptible to cabs. Cabs, in fact,

appeared to be on every hand, and the rumble of them persisted

obstinately in his ears. Now, at a street corner, he would have to draw

back from the kerb whilst some empty and oscillating vehicle, drawn by a

galloping steed--smoking like a clothes-horse and steaming away into the

mist as if it were the very source of it--rocked tempestuously over the

crossing, hot from one journey and belated for the next. Or it was a

vehicle of more substantial burden, its steamy windows showing blurred

and blot-like visages behind the glass and internal hands rubbing

peeping places on the vapoured pane, that rolled with a comfortable

motion to the Mansion House, where the striped awning flagged humidly

under the weight of fog, and the two policemen stood by the two portly

and aldermanic lampposts, and a crimson carpet flowed all the way from

the Mayoral staircase to the pavement’s edge.

Oswald’s errand took him through the upper end of the High Gate--where

the High Gate becomes residential and calls itself Hill Street--to a big

semi-detached house in St. Lawrence Square. Only a single and

ineffectual gaslamp guarded each entrance to the Square, and as the

houses were ranged on the three sides of a green enclosure, the

mist--encouraged by the trees and herbage--lay somewhat more thickly

here, folding these residences away from common observation, and

enlarging their foggy shapes when seen to preternatural magnitude. No

sounds of noisy childhood disturbed the formal silence of this

sequestered space, nor Chinese crackers sputtered in the gloom. The

light that percolated here and there through blinds or through the fans

over the front doors, or from some upper window where more than one

gaslit globe could be descried gleaming like a sickly moon, spread no

part of its comfort or hospitality abroad. And perhaps to the little

Oswald, trying never to forget he was a gentleman, this effect of

illuminative reserve--as though the globes and very gas-jets shone for

nobody but their owners, and grudged each ray expended in surplus of

necessity--might be exaggerated. Even gas-jets and front doors and

railings and bell pulls can present an attitude of studious

discouragement.

Yet there is, or surely must be, something in the quality of true

gentlemanliness that neither night nor mist nor silence can conceal.

For, noiseless though he tried to be (and was) no sooner had the little

Oswald reached the dim profundity of the porch he sought, than there

arose a sudden stir within: a violent and vehement commotion, it seemed

to him, occasioned by his advent, that robbed his paralyzed right arm of

any power to reach or ring the bell. Disconcerting voices broke out at

close quarters behind the solid panels of the big front door, and almost

simultaneously it burst open before his blinking eyes with the

exclamation:

“It’s Him at last!”

3

Yes, It was Him at last. Him in very truth. Through the embarrassment

caused by this so cordial and unexpected reception pride stirred not

unpleasantly within the small boy’s bosom. Gentlemanliness, like Virtue,

was its own reward, then, after all. His mother had been right; her

counsels were justified. Always, and under every circumstance, Be a

Gentleman.

The flood of light let out upon his shrinking eyes dazzled him with the

bright vision of an apocalyptic hall. The very light itself seemed

luminously rich as though (albeit fed from the same main) of a quality

superior to that which starved in the municipal gaslamps without. The

great globe suspended over the chequered tiles seemed--to this recent

denizen of the dark--bursting with its own effulgence; beneath its

mellow beams he had the consciousness of rugs and staircases and

polished banisters and clocks and curtains and impressive human figures

in the overwhelming plural. The hand that had flung open the door so

startlingly was red and fleshy, emerging from a white starched cuff

which, in conjunction with a cap and apron, proclaimed itself the

property of a maid. Simultaneously with the cry “It’s Him!” she stabbed

her glance into the misty void above Oswald’s head as though accrediting

him with a stature greater than he owned, and continued without a

pause. “Do you call this 7-25? What’s use of ordering?”

What’s use of ordering!

At a rebuff so unexpected the little Oswald’s spirit, so briefly

stimulated, as briefly sank. Did he call this 7-25? He had no notion

what it was or what they called it. What was the use of ordering? Why!

What indeed! His mouth quivered; his brow fell; a flush--like some

fabled monster with burning jaws began to swallow him wholemeal, from

the feet upwards. It was Ended. Gentlemanliness was altogether routed

and put to shame. There would be no orders--for, as the maid had

properly declared: “What was the use of ordering?”

He proffered no excuse, but mutely stood, confessing fault and penitence

with downcast eyes. And the maid’s eyes--tempered in the crucible of

years of experience for answering doors and putting errand boys and

beggars in their place--after a moment’s conflict with the outer

darkness, dropped upon the mortified cap and muffler and black woollen

gloves, and cried in tones of almost incredulous disgust:

“Well I declare! It isn’t Him mum.”

A lady’s voice repeated irritably: “Not HIM?” “Not Him!” echoed in

shrill dismay from the lips of a little girl, poised in tense expectancy

on the lowermost stair with her hand on the volute of the banister.

“Surely! Whoever is it, then?” asked the lady petulantly.

“Why ... it’s the Sausage Boy!” declared the little girl, running from

the curtail step to the centre of the hall in order to take stock of the

visitor who was not Him, and the Sausage Boy thus by name proclaimed

deemed the moment opportune to be a Gentleman in earnest, according to

strict prescription, which consisted in raising the round black cap with

the black glove and lowering his eyes and breathing in a voice so

politely attenuated as to be not very much more audible than Thought:

“Please ... Mother sends her compliments and wishes to know....”

What his mother, by these complimentary methods, wished to know did not

immediately transpire, for there were things the lady in the hall sought

to know too; other, more pressing, urgent things that absorbed the whole

of her attention.

“Isn’t he there at all, then?” she asked. The maid--first brushing the

silenced gentleman to one side as she stepped into the porch to thrust a

scrutinizing head beyond its pillars,--exclaimed: “Nay, that he isn’t

mum. He isn’t anywheres.”

The lady, whose left arm (as little Oswald, through his downcast eyelids

dimly noticed) was hid beneath a cloud of fleecy wraps and shawls, made

peremptory sounds of displeasure with her tongue and teeth, and promptly

subjected the maid to a searching catechism. Was the maid quite sure she

had given the right time--though to be sure their own common sense might

have told them! Had she particularly mentioned that it was for Mrs.

Bankett, No. 3 St. Lawrence Square--though to be sure the name itself

should be quite enough. “Everybody knows Mrs. Bankett, St. Lawrence

Square.” To which the maid, resenting this public reflection on her

powers of ordering, retaliated with a degree of certitude only short of

defiance. All these things had she done, and given the message twice

over--to Him and to Her as well--and had stood by and seen it wrote upon

the slate. “I told ’em particular it was for the Mansion House. And both

Him and Her promised faithful it shouldn’t be forgot. But them cabs is

all alike, mum. There’s no depending on ’em. They’ll promise anything,

cabs will. They want smartening up. That’s what cabs want.”

The little girl whose mind had been visibly distracted between anxiety

about the cab and concern to have her importance properly acknowledged

by this adventitious pair of eyes, advanced to the porch under

profession of looking for the defaulting vehicle, and addressed Oswald.

“I’m going to the Mayor’s Party. This is my dress. I am Little Bo Peep.

Here is the crook I have to carry.” She held forth a shepherdess’s staff

the height of herself, wound from the top to bottom with a white ribbon

and decorated below the crook with a broad pink bow twice the size of

that she wore in her crimped and golden hair. All around her pink skirt

(as she was particular to point out to the little boy framed dimly in

the porch like some old master against a background of mist and

darkness) frolicsome fleecy lambs sported in white wool, their eyes

glittering with glass beads, their tails constituting a tasseled fringe.

Moreover, to guard against any possible misconception on the part of an

unintelligent public, the hem of her frock was boldly encircled with the

legend (in gilt lettering): LITTLE BO PEEP HAS LOST HER SHEEP. Her shoes

and stockings were of the palest (and it seemed to Oswald) costliest

silk, of a shade for which his limited nomenclature had no name. White

lace mittens extended from her knuckles to her elbows, and these she

displayed in turn. “Look, I am to wear these. We only exchanged them

this morning. The others were too large. Aren’t you going to the Party?

Of course you aren’t. Weren’t you asked? Listen! Is that the cab? O, I

wish the cab would come. I shall be late.”

All this intelligence and interrogation she poured out with such

volubility that the most of it was uttered before the lady with the

shawls had time to interrupt the colloquy, saying:

“Eleanor! Come away from the door. The mist is dreadfully thick. You

might easily catch cold in those thin clothes.”

And though Oswald, trying hard to be a gentleman, was troubled to decide

in what appropriate words or manner he should acknowledge so great a

condescension, his own pride, alternately encouraged and depressed,

began to stir him pleasurably again. For he was yet too young and

inexperienced to know that Vanity does not scruple to make use of the

meanest mirror to reflect her glory, and that even the greatest of this

world will stoop to warm the fingers of their pride at any comfortable

flame, without too much inquiry as to the nature of the fuel that feeds

it. And since, moreover, a flattered vanity is the father of affection,

the little Oswald was filled on a sudden with a deep and fervent and

perfectly embarrassing devotion to this fairy figure in her silks and

furbelows. There was no doubt (his gratitude affirmed) that she was

beautiful. There was no doubt that she was richly dressed. Much more

beautiful, and much more richly dressed than the inanimate young lady

with the pendent legs and sick and waxen cheek pressed against the man’s

brown beard, who had been borne out of the gloomy gaslit passage and

deposited in the recesses of the gloomier cab. And even she had stirred

the sensitive fancy of the little Sausage Boy and kindled within his

bosom that inflammable material of imagination ever ready to catch the

quickening spark and burn to the most heroic and noble resolves. But O!

Not like this one. Not worthy, indeed, to be compared with the richly

decorated daughter of Mrs. Bankett of St. Lawrence Square, whom

everybody knew.

Out of his ineffable inner glories he was awakened with a start by the

sound of Mrs. Bankett’s voice. Deceived by the dimness and silence of

the porch into fancying it empty, she asked if the little boy were still

there.

Yes, the little boy was still there, and deeming the moment this time

positively at hand for him to be a Gentleman in earnest, raised his cap

anew and recited in a voice as carefully modulated as before the pious

formula committed to his memory: “Please ... Mother sends her

compliments and wishes to know....”

He stopped again, for again--by the moving of her lips--it seemed there

were things Mrs. Bankett also wished to know. She wished to know, for

instance, (not addressing the mist-invaded porch, but the maid) if

(perhaps) the Sausage Boy would run as far as Jobling’s and tell the cab

to come at once. The maid, without troubling to refer to the porch, told

her mistress she was sure he would (mum) and turning to Oswald

translated Mrs. Bankett’s query into the present imperative.

“Missus says you’re to run to Jobling’s and tell cab to come at once.”

“Does he know where Jobling’s is?” Mrs. Bankett interposed.

“You know where Jobling’s is, don’t you?” said the maid. “Where the cabs

come from?”

“Tell him the Livery Stables,” prompted Mrs. Bankett.

“Livery Stables ...” said the maid.

“In Queen Street,” Mrs. Bankett added. “Just beyond the pump, tell him,

Mary.”

“You’ve got to look sharp!” the maid admonished him. “Don’t stop

anywheres on the way. Go as quick as you can, and tell cab to come at

once. Mrs. Bankett’s, think on....” She impressed the directions on his

mind.

“The name will be sufficient, Mary,” Mrs. Bankett threw in from the

hall. “Everybody knows my name. But perhaps ...” she added prudently,

“he had better say St. Lawrence Square.”

“You’re to say St. Lawrence Square,” the maid repeated.

“And the number ...” Mrs. Bankett said. “Not,” her dignity explained,

“that there’s any need. But still.... On a night like this. They’re so

stupid. I must call round to-morrow. No. 3, tell him.”

“You’re to tell ’em No. 3,” the maid interpreted as Oswald turned to go.

“Cab’s been ordered since before half past ten this morning, tell ’em.

We’re stood waiting of ’em, tell ’em. Say they ought to be ashamed of

theirselves. What’s the good of ordering, tell ’em. Say we shall order

off of somebody else next time, unless they mend. Stop! Hark! Is yon cab

coming?... No! I might ’a known it wasn’t. Everybody’s cab’ll be coming

but ours. Well? What are you standing and staring there for? Do you mean

to stop all night? Be off wi’ you.”

4

Oswald raised his cap politely--albeit to nobody in particular, since

nobody was looking at him--readjusted his gloves and commenced the

descent of the four steps, that went black as ink the moment he trod on

the first of them, being cut off from the source of light by the closing

of the door. He had to grope his way to the gate, for the brilliance of

the big yellow globe so long looked at remained imprinted on the fundus

of his eye, and interposed complementary blots between that and all he

sought to see. But once in the square he took to his heels, inspired by

the pressing importance of the service he had been called upon to

render, and also by the noblest desire to repay the little girl in the

pink party frock for the honour she had conferred on him. He would shew

her how a gentleman could run. She should see with what speed a

gentleman could deliver messages. He knew Queen Street and the erect

wooden pump with the stiff one arm like a Chelsea pensioner--that in

another month’s time would be swathed in straw for Christmas, with a

swollen look as if it had the mumps--and he knew Jobling’s Livery

Stables, and the cab was ordered before half past ten, and what was the

use of ordering, and they were waiting of them now, and they ought to be

ashamed of themselves. All the way he kept rehearsing his instructions,

saying them over and over to himself with fervour, fearful lest any

portion of the committed message might escape his memory as he ran. In

his kindled zeal he longed beyond anything to deliver his instructions

intact, down to the smallest particle. As he turned out of the square,

such was his burning confidence reciprocating the confidence reposed in

him, he believed he could do it. But with each successive step that took

him nearer Jobling’s the plastic facility of the phrases seemed to set

and stiffen. And as he came in sight and scent of Jobling’s yard--which

was just off Hill Street, and not more than an easy three minutes’ run

from St. Lawrence Square--the message in his mouth was mixed up with

horrible misgivings, and memory itself began to falter.

Outside, against the kerb, stood the pump: the wooden pump with whose

rigid and rheumatic handle Queen Street infancy (under no obligation

whatever to be a gentleman) was wont to play ride-a-cock-horse, shrouded

now by the mist that clung broodingly about its person and enlarged its

bulk to preternatural proportions. And beyond the pump yawned the arched

and vaulted carriage way to Jobling’s yard exhaling pungent equine

odours; a dark and disconcerting void that engulfed the little Oswald’s

figure and lent an echoing sepulchral character to his faltering

footsteps over the unlevel cobbles with which the yard was

paved--causing him to turn an anxious head for reassurance that the pump

had not crept up behind him. Probing his way forward with both hands

protectfully outspread, he came at the farther end of the vaulted

carriage-way upon a stable lamp suspended on a nail. The lamp’s glass

was so opaquely smoked as to yield no perceptible light whatever; the

brown flame, half smothered in a sooty deposit, emitted a moribund and

lugubrious gleam. Had it been Him himself, hanging in expiring throes

from a wall-hook, the effect could scarcely have been more disturbing to

a Gentleman. But he mustered courage to apply his knuckles to the door

which the expiring lantern was obviously intended to illuminate, and

took the liberty to cough--hoping that the cough rather than the

knuckles would betray his modest presence to whatever other presence had

its awful habitation in the darks and silences of this place. Three

times he knocked upon the door, coughing apologetically on each occasion

to let those know who listened with what humility he ventured to disturb

their peace, and held his knuckles already raised to give a fourth and

final summons--a loud, conclusive summons this, that should be audible

even to himself--when with startling suddenness an unsuspected door at

right angles to the one he knocked at flew open without a sound, letting

out an elongated track of light across the glistening cobbles with a

magnified great shadow projected from the middle of it.

“Who’s there?” demanded a voice after an interval of intense silence, in

which neither Oswald nor the shadow moved. The voice was a woman’s

voice, sharp and terse, that ripped the silence as if it had been

calico.

“It’s me,” said Oswald.

“Who’s me?”

“Oswald Holmroyd.”

“Come your ways here,” pronounced the voice, which evidently belonged to

the ‘Her’ that the maid had spoken of, and when Oswald approached the

silhouette confronting him: “Now then,” it asked. “What do you want?”

“Please ...” he began, and relapsed into the pious formula, “ ... mother

sends her compliments and wishes to know....” With which, realizing the

enormity of his offence, his powers of articulation failed him.... “It’s

the cab,” he found strength to whisper after a pause.

“Cab? Cabs is all out,” the silhouette informed him, which was the

silhouette of a middle-aged woman in a coarse apron, with her sleeves

rolled up to the elbows. “What time do you want cab for?”

“To-night,” Oswald urged, with the breathlessness of desperation. “At

once, please.”

“Is it for the station?”

“It’s for the Mansion House.” The message, almost irrecoverably lost in

the stirring episodes of these recent moments, surged back on him with

all its pristine force. “They’re waiting now.”

“Who’s waiting?”

“Mrs. Bankett.”

“Which Mrs. Bankett?”

For the life of Oswald could he think which Mrs. Bankett, although he

had Mrs. Bankett’s own authority for saying “the Mrs. Bankett that

everybody knows.” Instead he relapsed impotently upon the address: No.

3, St. Lawrence Square.

“It is on the Slate,” he prompted, with lips of such awed politeness

that they scarcely moved, and eyes of such delicate consideration for

her feelings that they dared not look. She repeated “Slate?” and

reaching out an arm beyond the door drew forth the very slate in fact,

from a nail in the wall, that she held diagonally towards the invisible

source of light with one hand and traced a way through a labyrinth of

figures with the forefinger of the other. “Aye!” she said at length.

“It’s here, safe enough. He’s got it. He’s taken it down. It’ll be all

right. Maybe he’s there by now. If not I’ll send him straight as soon as

he comes back. Cabs is busy to-night.”

There was a pause. The interview seemed ended. The door was closing. It

closed. Simultaneously the little Oswald was in gloom again.

His return to the Square coincided with the apparition of a cab--an

empty, rattling and resounding cab that came up the Hill Street at a

gallop, rocked uproariously over the crossing, and bounced up to the

house of Mrs. Bankett whom everybody knew. It was Him. Him at last.

Oswald’s heart, depressed till now, leaped exultantly within him. Here

were the fruits of his errand. The cab grated up to the kerb; the big

door opened; coagulated light flowed sluggishly from the porch; the

voice of the maid exclaimed, “You’re a nice one, _you_ are!” An injured

voice retorted, “I’ve come as fast as I could. I couldn’t drive no

faster.” There was a stir and bustle in the porch; a gleam of shawls and

silks; a mixture of eager voices; the slamming of a cab door; the

slashing of a whip, and the cab rolled past the silent Oswald and out of

the square. The maid watched it from the gate till its mist-enveloped

shape had turned the corner, exchanging words with some invisible figure

in the porch that Oswald judged to be the Mrs. Bankett that everybody

knew. Then the clash of the gate was succeeded by tripping footsteps and

a ruffle of skirts in motion.

A fear stabbed swiftly through the heart of the little Oswald. He

turned a supplicating face to the porch, but the action came too late.

He was left standing by the railings. His gentlemanliness had hesitated

all too long to act or to proclaim itself. Fearful of intruding he had

taken up his modest station at some few paces from the gate, awaiting

only the departure of the cab to tender once again his twice frustrated

message: “Please ... Mother sends her compliments ... and wishes to

know....”

It had seemed to him that his presence was amicably recognized and

admitted. The maid had looked in his direction twice as if she smiled.

The little girl appeared to include him in the farewell waving of her

mittened fingers through the window. And now they were all gone, the

gate and front door closed inexorably against him. A lump compounded of

impotence and self-compassion rose up into his throat. Could he dare to

ring the bell a second time? No, he could not. It was impossible. He was

too much of a gentleman. He had had too good a father. He had been too

well brought up.

All he could do was to stand with his cheeks pressed despairingly

against the gate, gazing at the porch and hoping.... Hoping that even

now they might remember him; that even now the door might suddenly fly

open, that voices might float out into the mist in search of him:

“Little boy!... Little boy!”

But no such summons stirred the watcher’s heart. Much later in the

evening--long after the dampness had accumulated once more on those

portions of the gate dried now by little Oswald’s troubled cheek and

gloves, the maid cried in the kitchen: “Lawks! Yon lad’s forgotten all

about sausages. A nice thing trusting such as him with a message. As

like as not he never went for cab at all.”

5

Is there anywhere defeat more dreadful than that sustained within the

region of one’s heart alone?

The little Oswald, relinquishing his hold upon the gate at last,

withdrew from the scene of this inglorious battle, humiliated and

despondent. How could he justify such treacherous capitulation to his

own cowardice? Whence came this terrible discrepancy between the heroic

greatness of his thought and the pusillanimity of action? For it was

useless that courage, from some craven hiding-place in his despair,

called upon him in a trembling voice to be a twelfth-hour gentleman or

die, saying: “What if the maid servant is angry? Anger hurts nobody.

What if she cries ‘It’s Him!’ _Be_ Him so long as Him is a gentleman and

raises his hat. Nothing a servant says or does can change a gentleman.”

And though courage, gathering voice and importunity, in inverse ratio to

its distance from the porch, expostulated with him thus, always his

apostate footsteps led him (more laggingly as he neared it) in the

direction of his home.

It was a house in a long street, and in a dark street too, when at last

he reached it--though the darkness here lent no such dignity to bricks

and mortar as it did in St. Lawrence Square, or such gloomy horrors as

it did to Jobling’s Yard. The houses stood in unbroken rank, shoulder to

shoulder; every door succeeded by a window, and every window by a door

in turn; each doorstep abutting on the pavement in company with a

cast-iron scraper and cellar grate. Only at rare intervals did these

houses present a glimmering of intelligent light towards the street. Now

and again some door slammed in the darkness here or there, going off

like a gun and rattling its own knocker with the force of its

concussion, and invisible footsteps hurried this way or that--some of

which, after the briefest journey, terminated curiously without a sound,

whilst others were extinguished by a distant door-slam, similar (but

fainter) to that which had brought them into being. The door knob that

Oswald took at last in both his hands to turn protruded from a door

distinguished superficially by little from its neighbours. But the

instant his fingers closed upon it--and this evening they did so more

tardily and silently than usual--a sudden welcoming voice called out his

name: a voice inflected to interrogation, and yet with a certitude that

rose above all query.

“Oswald?”

With the door-knob in both hands still pressed against his bosom he

pushed his way into the narrow passage beyond.

“Yes, mother.”

“Is that you?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Come my child! I was growing anxious about you. There are so many cabs

to-night. Did you take the greatest care?”

“Yes, mother.”

The voice that thus addressed the little Oswald was sweet and musical,

but more striking than either of these two excellent qualities was its

colour of unmistakable tenderness. Mother-solicitude so sweetened and

suffused it that the dark, irradiated by this clear beacon of a voice,

shed all its lurking terrors in a moment and became serene and harmless.

Simultaneously with Oswald’s entrance a chink of light, drawn

perpendicularly like a chalk line from top to bottom of the right-hand

passage wall, expanded to a vivid oblong, and the owner of the voice

came into view at the foot of a flight of stairs. One side of her

caught the bright illumination, the other lay in shadow. Still, her

figure presented an effect of radiance, being covered with a white

overall, whose sleeves--like the sleeves of Her who had appeared so

startlingly to Oswald at Jobling’s--were rolled up above the elbows, and

both her hands and three parts of each forearm were floury white. But

these were very different arms, and this was a very different voice, and

the look that accosted Oswald was a very different look. It fell upon

him anxiously at first, seizing on every part of him to make sure he

was, in truth, her very son, unaltered and unhurt, and melting over him

thereafter in a visual embrace of fondest reassurance. She could not

embrace him with her arms, for all she showed desire to do so, but she

held these out for his admission and he walked passively within their

bay to receive upon his uplifted face the fervent mother-kiss betraying

the gratification of a hunger long denied. The expression of her

countenance when it stooped to him, and of her voice when--the kiss

bestowed--it said “My boy!” were curiously blended of love, compassion

and exultant pride, as if with him pressed defensively to her bosom she

flung a challenge to the world whose dangers he had so lately braved.

Before such manifestation of unbounded love the recipient’s eyes sank

guiltily beneath the weight of their unworthiness; his lips quivered and

forgot their function for very shame, until those other lips reminded

them: “ ... Aren’t you going to kiss your mother, Oswald?” Yes ... he

was going to kiss her. He kissed her, in fact, laying his chilly mouth

against her cheek. She noted the inertness of the lips, and withdrew

from the caress, crying he must be cold and tired after his long round,

and how thoughtless of her to keep him standing in the passage when

there was such a warm and lovely fire awaiting him inside. With which,

solicitously guiding him with her arms, she pressed her son towards the

open door from which she had emerged, that led--as it appeared--into the

kitchen. In the brightly polished range a red and glowing fire lent its

aid to the single naked gas-jet, that might have shed a cheerless

ineffectual light but for the blazing co-operation of the coals. On the

scoured deal table beneath the gas pendant stood a glazed pancheon

containing paste, which, together with a paste-board, a large tin

flour-dredger, a rolling pin, a bowl of water, half a dozen round baking

tins or more, of different sizes, carefully lined with greased paper,

and other culinary implements, sufficiently explained the state of Mrs.

Holmroyd’s wrists and the work on which she was engaged.

Under other circumstances and in other hands this kitchen might,

perhaps, have worn a bare and hardened look, for there was but little

furniture in it, and that of the simplest kind. Its walls were

colour-washed a cleanly buff; a buff blind hung before its solitary

window; some cheap wooden chairs and a square of crimson-edged fibre

matting beneath the central table, reinforced with two or three grocers’

coloured almanacs and a row of polished spice canisters on the

mantelpiece practically completed its equipment. The part-opened door of

a painted cupboard afforded a glimpse of crockery and familiar blue

sugar bags. Another door beyond this led down into a tiny scullery.

But the cheerful conjunction of lights and the spotless cleanliness of

every object revealed by them, and beyond all the presence of Oswald’s

mother, transmuted these bare walls and meagre furniture into an

expression of a something greater than themselves. This kitchen, one

might affirm, possessed a soul; a countenance of almost human

kindliness, that loveless labours had not soiled or soured; a voice

capable of uttering--to the little Oswald at least--the dear word

“Home.” As he unwrapped the woollen muffler from his neck, his glance

instinctively went the round of all the empty chairs as though in quest

of some expected presence. The action, slight though it was, did not

escape his mother’s eye. She answered the silent question that it asked:

“Beryl has gone to bed,” she told him. “I think she must be asleep.”

As though in contradiction to the statement a far-away and childish

voice cried “Mother” with long-drawn breath, “Has Oswald come back?”

Oswald answered for himself: “I’m here, Beryl!” The far-away voice

returned: “Come here, Oswald. I want to say good-night.” In Mrs.

Holmroyd’s eyes a look of sadness crept. “Poor Beryl! I had been hoping

she was asleep. Don’t ... don’t say anything to disturb her, Oswald. She

cried after you were gone to-night. Try and help her to forget it.”

The call, mournfully protracted, floated down to them again.

“Oswald.”

Leaving the comfortable brightness of the kitchen Oswald mounted the

narrow stairs. On the landing his name was vocalized again, more softly

this time, for the listener had heard and counted every footstep so

firmly planted to establish and sustain his courage, and knew him near

at hand.

“Oswald.”

He passed into the bedroom through the door left partly open for the

reduction of loneliness and for free communication with the maternal

vigilance below, and made his way to the little brass-railed bed, beyond

the defensive bigger bed, from which the voice had emanated. There he

stretched out his arms in the darkness to where two smaller, softer,

warmer outspread arms awaited them. At the first contact the head of

the Sausage-Boy was drawn down almost fiercely into the dark shelter of

a tiny bosom in which a tiny heart was throbbing fast. The arms

encompassing his neck closed upon it with the energy of despair. His

face was kissed persistently with lips that emitted breaths of curious

hotness, and though within the depths of this embrace all was pitchy

dark and Oswald had his eyes closed for sufferance of his sister’s

caresses--his lips reciprocating kissing sounds for every kiss bestowed

upon him--he knew the kisses were but a substitute for tears, and his

name at each reutterance partook more and more of a plaintive and liquid

character.

“Did you ... did you see anything, Oswald?” the fervent lips demanded,

and the arms made as if to hug the information out of him.

He said evasively: “Some cabs.”

“Going.... There?”

“I think so.”

There was a sniff. And then:

“Did you see inside?”

“Not very well.”

“Were there any little girls inside?”

“One or two.”

“All dressed up?”

“Yes.”

“How big were they? As big as me?”

“Some of them.”

There was a second sniff. And after awhile a third. And Oswald felt the

little bosom shake and quiver like a boiled pudding in its pan. He said,

“Never mind, Beryl. Don’t cry!” But there was a something hardening in

his own throat too, and behind his eyes was the sting of fire.

“To-morrow we will go with mother to the market.” Something hot and

liquid, like a bead of molten lead, escaped from his constricted

eyelids and fell into the fevered bosom below. The sniffs stopped

abruptly, and after an intent silence the treble voice, instinct with a

new alertness, enquired:

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

A hot hand, leaving its place behind his neck, groped over his cheeks

and explored his eyes.

“You’re crying too!” the voice charged him, with a satisfaction almost

jubilant. “O, Oswald!”

The lump in his throat, growing bigger and more persistent, allowed him

to make no denial. Melted by each other’s tears the Sausage Boy and his

sister sniffed without dissimulation, savouring the ecstatic sadness of

a sorrow shared.

6

It was a Friday, and Friday for the little Oswald took on the character

of a very arduous day. It was a day, indeed, on which the work of trying

to be a gentleman attained its weekly maximum. For two hours, or nearly,

he had been traversing the streets of Daneborough, engrossed in the

changeless yet ever changeful problem of how a gentleman should deal

with knockers or ring bells too high for him--an anxious task calling

for the nicest discrimination and skill. And all this, supplemented by

his extra journey to the livery stables, and the tears shed over his

sister’s nightdress, did not conclude his labours for the day. There

still remained a further errand to perform--and that quickly, for the

hands of the clock were moving menacefully to the hour of eight, and at

eight o’clock Oswald (as a fully accredited chorister) was due to attend

the weekly choir practice in the chancel of St. Saviour’s church.

The flour had disappeared from Mrs. Holmroyd’s hands when Oswald

descended to the kitchen, and a capacious wicker basket stood upon the

scoured deal table, which Mrs. Holmroyd was lining with a clean white

napkin as he entered. She smoothed the creases of the folded cloth,

replaced the slotted lid over the wicker handle and slid the handle over

the arm that Oswald silently extended. That done, she took the woollen

muffler from its place of airing on the fender; held it--first this side

and then that--to the ruddy cheek of the fire, and testing its

preparedness with a critical hand, enwrapped it once again round

Oswald’s neck, tucking its fringed ends punctiliously beneath his jacket

as before.

Whereupon, encouraged with an enquiring “Well, dear?” Oswald began his

familiar Friday night’s recital--that custom had crystallized into a

formula almost as invariable as the polite “Please ... Mother sends her

compliments” with which he presented the weekly message on her behalf.

Mrs. Dunster was obliged and would take a large porkpie but no sausages.

Mrs. Lockford was obliged and would be glad to have a medium pie this

week and a pound of sausages. Mrs. Hibbert was obliged, and they were

getting tired of pork, but Oswald might call next Friday. Mrs. Fletcher

was obliged....

The recital proceeded; the list of orders slowly grew. Only one

eighteenpenny pie stood now between Oswald and Mrs. Bankett whom

everybody knew. He drew his breath and his colour deepened. The fateful

name was raised at last. Mrs. Bankett ... whom everybody knew....

Mrs. Bankett had ordered no pork pie. No sausages. Only a cab. His words

hurried now with his admission as if they had been legs. “I ran to fetch

it for them. When I got back it drove away. They went inside and shut

the door. I waited for some time.... They never came to the door

again.... I came home.”

His mother said “Without the money?” and gazed at him with a tragic and

incredulous eye.

Without the money? Aye! Now he came to think of it, he had clean

forgotten that. He had clean forgotten the payment for last week’s order

that was to be relegated to this; the four and sixpence of such terrific

consequence to the mother of a son studying hard to be a gentleman. The

taste of the bitterness of failure came back again into his mouth like

gall. He had defiled his mother’s trust in him. Her confidence in his

ability had been betrayed....

She did not upbraid him as other mothers might have done. Too well she

knew the bitter testament of the human heart--her own, and through her

own, her son’s who was a living part of her and whose pains and

sufferings she shared. She put her hand upon his shrinking shoulder and

drew away the coat sleeve (with the wicker basket on it) lifted to his

eyes as though to shield contrition from the sight of sorrow his

cowardice had caused. “Never mind, Oswald. Never mind, dear. Mother is

not angry with you. She is proud of you. You have done wonders. Mother

can manage.... She can manage very well.”

He had done wonders. Mother could manage very well. But for all that it

was a dubious eye that peered into the flabby crevices of mother’s

purse, eliciting at last with finest use of forefinger and thumb some

inconspicuous silver and three coppers. Three and ninepence in all.

Three and ninepence was very little for the work in hand, but it

afforded the repentant Oswald an opportunity unparalleled to be a

gentleman in earnest. Here was a chance indeed. With his three and

ninepence in his tight right hand and this basket on his arm he could

go firmly to the pork butcher’s ... to the pork butcher’s and say:

“Please, Mr. Waxford. Mother sends her compliments, and she wants just

the same as she had last week. And here is three and ninepence....”

“ ... Three and ninepence....” Mother and son were looking fixedly into

each other’s eyes by now, as Oswald’s lips repeated--or at least

re-shaped--the words that issued from her. “ ... And ninepence. And if

you please I will bring the rest of the money in the morning. Mother is

rather short of change.”

Could he remember this message? He could. Could he repeat it? He could

and did, in a chill and conscientious undertone animated by no more

expression than a leg of mutton freshly drawn from cold store. The

coinage so recently collected with such care and dubiously looked at was

softly pressed into his unresisting hand. The cap was placed upon his

head. Mother was short of change. It would be quite all right. Mr.

Waxford would understand.

Ah! this sad profession of trying to be a gentleman, that difficilizes

every act of life and makes cowardice so dreadful. Not even to his

mother dared this quaking paladin confess the mockery of his valour. He

assumed the insignia of her misplaced confidence in him and went out,

wondrously, into the mist once more.

This time he performed his errand with a curious sense of detachment,

speculating impersonally as to the fate of it. His visit to the livery

stables and his defeat at Mrs. Bankett’s had broken his nerve. The vow

that his craven courage tried to register and animate was but a feeble

lifeless thing, the mere skimmed milk of resolution, all its strength

and goodness lacking. He held his mother’s love and trust on false

pretences. And if anything were needed to convince despondency of its

unworthiness it was the sight of Waxford’s shop. What brilliance! What

publicity! What merciless exposure of shrinking purpose and deceptive

ends were here.

7

Think of a row of close serried naked gas-burners, twelve to the foot at

least; all stertorously puffing out their bluey yellow flames into the

night over a double front of plate-glass windows divided by a shop door,

the slightest waft of air serving to enrage them and rouse them to a

roar. Now they go blue, to the point of extinction, like a mendicant’s

lips in winter. Now a glissando ripple runs up and down their extended

gamut. Now the entire row bursts out into the exuberance of

irrepressible activity; a seething, hissing line of flame that seems to

set the whole shop front in motion and galvanizes all its white and

pendent carcasses into a lurid danse macabre. There must have been a

dozen porcine corpses suspended from the bright steel hooks along the

glazed shop wall within; their heads downward; their countenances fixed

in a ghastly stereotyped, sardonic risus; their nostrils dripping red

blood into the sawdust heaped below each muzzle, as they awaited their

momentous metamorphosis into modes of human life. Freed from the sin,

the sloth, the gluttony of their purely animal existence they would turn

to all sorts of things. The loins of this one might be translated into

love; the ribs of that other might reappear on Sunday transfigured as a

sermon, denouncing vice and propagating dogma. To-day they were but

pork; to-morrow they would put on humanity, assume the substance of

mankind, become incorporate partners in man’s very soul; fortifiers of

his faith; heritors, with him, of his glorious immortality.

To the little Oswald, attached with conscientious might and main to

three and ninepence and the wicker basket, this spectacle of twelve

impassive corpses--all of one size, all of one semblance, all reduced to

a grizzled uniformity in death, their once voracious stomachs cleft and

emptily outspread for public edification as if they preached a sermon

protestive of the vanity of all things earthly--impressed his

susceptibilities less than the gas-blanched mortuary in which they hung.

More terrible than these twelve impassive blood-sealed jurors to him

were the roaring lights without, that seemed to hiss and mock his

courage; the pallid opal globes within, blazoning in sable capitals the

name of Waxford. The callous ostentation of the shop dismayed him with

its gleaming scales of brass and marble; its hooks and implements of

spotless steel; its chopping-block of scoured and scalded cleanliness;

its sawdust sprinkled floor, and last and dreadfullest of all--its

proprietor’s obese and proper person, arrayed in Friday’s immaculate

white vestments, unstained as yet by grease or gore; the starched and

snowy tunic protracted by the not less snowy apron which--drawn tightly

round his nether quarters--made no appreciable indentation on his noble

convexity. By some process of assimilation as yet imperfectly understood

by scientists or theologians, much intimacy and close association with

the world of pork had brought the rotund Waxford into striking physical

conformity with what he dealt in. His eyes, deep sunk within their

fleshy orbits, presented a glazed and porcine stare; his ears were large

and hispid; his flesh possessed a bleached and waxen character curiously

akin to that of the twelve inverted apostles lining his white-tiled

wall. Slung up by his heels to the steel rod, with his head and

forepaws to the floor, and his internal economy spread open to

inspection on a cambrel, he might have cut no despicable figure in

competition with the carcasses displayed to-night. As he stood, filling

the shop door with his bulk, one hand immersed in the spacious pocket of

his apron, where it toyed indolently with a copious provision of loose

change, he was a form to strike dismay into the heart of three and

ninepence. Three and ninepence, indeed, asked itself fearfully where the

courage requisite to disturb that breadth of abdomen was coming from,

and had not yet received its answer from heaven when the Waxford gaze,

proprietorially roaming over the area of public roadway annexed from

darkness by his blazing burners to form an extension of his business,

fell at last upon the wicker basket on the irresolute right arm and lay

there with such a substantial weight of look as almost to bow the basket

down. The eye--that small, sagacious, active eye--recognized the

Holmroyd basket in a trice, and read the meaning of that tightly folded

hand. Out of the creases in his voluminous neck emerged a voice:

peremptory, decisive.

“Now my lad!” it said, and without dissimulation my lad stepped forth.

Who was three and ninepence to withstand a summons such as this.

Three and ninepence, turning itself over and over along with Mother’s

compliments, all in a tropical and coppery sweat, followed the surpliced

proprietor into his place of business (that only by default of a few

water-sprays and some chloride of lime fell short of being a morgue)

where the Waxford assistant industriously rotated the handle of a

galvanized iron mincing machine.

“Please ... Mother sends her compliments ... and she wants ... just the

same ... as she had last week....”

The message broke off abruptly as if by its own weight. Three and

ninepence awaited horror-struck for an amendment that never came. Even

the gas-globes blinked incredulously and rolled protesting eyes; the

assistant applied himself blindly to the galvanized iron mincer as if

staggered and appalled. Only Waxford made no sign. Only Waxford

preserved his imperturbability, saying he knew what Mrs. Holmroyd wanted

well enough. “Give us hold of your basket, boy.”

In the most appalling silence, unbroken by a word, three and ninepence

saw the awful activities precipitated by its rash pronouncement. Knives

were sharpened with a clash and gleam of deadly steel; glittering

choppers rose and fell; the brass and marble scales oscillated with

tremulous irresolution before Waxford’s judicial eye. Something was

swept from the liberated balance and inhumed by Waxford’s busy fingers

in Oswald’s basket. The white cloth was wrapped like a winding sheet

about these committed remains, the lid was replaced.

“There, my lad!” said Waxford at the conclusion of this brief but

impressive ceremony. “That’s a bit of lovely stuff, tell your mother.

She won’t beat it anywhere in this town. Seven and elevenpence.” A white

and puffy palm, gleaming with the grease of its recent labours grew

forthwith to gigantic proportions and eclipsed the basket beneath

Oswald’s gaze. Chink, chink, chink, chink. Coin by coin three and

ninepence took laborious leave of its temporary owner and passed into

the extended palm that would have made half a dozen three and ninepences

look puny.

“Three and six,” (the voice of Waxford continued) “and seven.... Three

and eight. And one’s nine.” He gave the coinage a shake as if to jog the

payer’s memory and expedite completion. “Three and nine, my lad. And

seven and eleven the skins and pork.--Is that all you’ve brought with

you?” For the Sausage Boy had raised a quick imploring face to the face

above him, and relapsed upon an abject “yes” that all his members

uttered rather than his lips.

With a man of less experience and resource than Waxford who knows how

long they might have preserved their two respective attitudes: this one

with averted eyes: that one with inverted hand? Nay, given but another

minute who shall say that the thought so fruitlessly beating against the

closed walls of Oswald’s brain might not have been heroically rescued by

his tongue at last? But the individual confronting him was unfettered by

any futile gentlemanly feelings--as the prosperity of his business and

the twelve apostles testified. All these legs and sides of pork, these

spiral stacks of vermilion boloneys, these bloated blood puddings and

basins of glutinous brawn, these strings of anaemic sausages, these

trays of scraped ears and translucent trotters, these bladders of

lard--bald and resplendent as the dome of Waxford’s head--had not been

assembled with such profusion in this place by qualities of sentiment

and diffidence. Their owner clapped the three and ninepence on the

counter beside the glittering scales and said: “You’re short, my lad.

You’d best run home and fetch the rest. Seven and elevenpence tell your

mother, and you’ve brought me three and nine. You needn’t bother to take

the basket. I’ll take care of it for you till you come back.”

The order, uttered without the least heat, brooked no contention. It was

a plain precept according to the first principles of sound business.

Three and ninepence--that was not three and ninepence any longer, but

only heartache wrapped up in a muffler--stood confounded for one moment.

The next it stole silently from the shop.

8

Again Oswald took hold of the familiar doorknob with both his hands and

turned it beneath the pressure of an overburdened bosom. Again he let

himself into the narrow passage with the chink of light drawn like a

chalk-line down the right hand wall. Again he was greeted by name; the

chalk-line widened to a rectangle of light; his mother, once more floury

of forearm, came out into the passage to welcome him. Her voice and her

insufferable tender smile--falling on a bosom charged with sorrow to its

brim--made grief overflow. Without a word, without a look, he passed

into the kitchen; chose the far-most chair; turned his face to the wall,

with his arm laid on the chair back and his nose buried in his coat

sleeve, and wept inconsolably.

It had come at last, this horrible exposure. Fruitlessly he had battled

with it, fought against it, seeing the inevitable evil draw nearer week

by week. Now the doom had fallen; he sat disgraced. He had wronged most

wickedly his mother’s love. She knew; she knew. Her smile had been a

sword of flame, plunged hilt-deep in the bowels of his delinquency.

Every object in the house knew his disgrace and scorned him. The Swiss

clock ticking on the mantelpiece withdrew its voice severely as though

it ticked no longer for unworthy Oswalds and kept no time for those who

put time to so little profit. The chair he sat on offered contrition an

uncomfortable seat. The sharp edge of its rail cut into the arm reposing

on it; the wall repulsed his forehead for all the world as if it cried:

“Away! I will have no concern with cowards.” He was disgraced, disowned,

deserted. And woefully he wept.

At first the suasive softness of his mother’s voice, the tender

supplication of her arms, inspired but a more obstinate refusal of the

lips to put their cause for weeping into words or let the rim of

comfort’s proffered cup come near them.

But little by little, by monosyllables at a time, trouble was fished up

from her watery depths, and Mrs. Holmroyd learned the truth of all these

tears. They stirred remorse, not anger. Her mother’s heart, smitten

through this comprehensible sorrow of her son’s, turned swiftly on

itself. The fault was hers, not his. She had been heedless of his years.

The tasks imposed on him were all too heavy for such slender shoulders;

too heavy on occasions for her own. Her conscience, self accused,

confessed a cowardice more culpable than his; a cowardice that went

disguised too frequently as love, concealed behind the subterfuge of

kisses, professing pride and trust in him--that all the while were but

tricks to trade upon affection and rouse in his small breast the courage

lacking in her own. Had she ignored the spectre over-shadowing this

evening’s errand? Did she not see, committing to his hand the dreadful

three and ninepence and to his lips the still more dreadful message, her

own dismay reflected out of Oswald’s eyes? Was it fair to make her son

the agent of commissions such as these because his guilelessness lacked

lips to confess fear and owned but eyes, beseeching to be read?

Save for a cruel providence his feet were never meant to run the

gutters. He was no errand boy (protesting conscience told her)

unhampered by pride and undeterred by truth; no common runner of the

roads to whom all streets were home; no blushless ringer of bells and

hardened rapper of knockers. He was his father’s son condemned to tasks

for which his gentleness was never fitted. The arms she wound about his

neck were contrite arms. The tears she spilled were tears of impotence

and pity, to think her love could help so little. Surely an all-wise,

merciful and loving Father might in His wisdom have devised some better

means to manifest His care of her and hers. Sorrow may be, as pietists

allege, the soul’s true sustenance, by feeding upon which it groweth

godlike. But sorrow too--as well she was aware--can be a mean and

pettifogging thing; a blister on the heel of aspiration that, for all

its paltriness, causes the noblest aim to limp. To sustain a spacious

sorrow is heroic; to resist some great temptation may be noble; but

daily to adjust small means to little ends teaches the soul to stoop.

The tallest stature may be lowered at last, and lofty thoughts lose

their uprightness that are daily subject to mean necessities. Like the

constant threading of fine needles the spiritual eyesight compelled to

read life’s petty print too closely loses its larger vision and risks

becoming blind to God.

All this and more moved in the mind of Oswald’s mother as she clasped

her son. But grief is a quality hopelessly unpractical. Grief is for the

opulent and leisured, who have the time for its indulgence and the

wealth to buy for it the luxuries it needs. Combat with a selfish world

(she feared) had made this mother very practical. Sometimes so sadly

practical that she must weep in privacy to think how changed she was.

She thought now of the absent basket and resolutely dried her eyes.

The dreadful practical part of her worked out a sordid sum in

subtraction. Three and nine from seven and elevenpence. Nine from

eleven, two; three from seven, four. Four shillings and twopence. Four

shillings and twopence she needed. Oswald’s eyes were fixed upon her

now; she would avenge his tears and re-instate his honour, cost what it

might. Decisively she doffed her overall, drew down her sleeves, assumed

her hat and mantle, and--first commending the house to Oswald’s sacred

care--went out into the November mist.

The clock struck eight. At the Mansion House those chosen children would

be joyful. In the chancel of St. Saviour’s (prodigious and appalling

thought) the choir practice had begun. On Waxford’s counter the interned

pork slept dreamlessly in its cotton shroud, unexpectant and

unperturbed.

9

The resolution displayed by Oswald’s mother had not a lengthy journey to

sustain. No lengthier, indeed, than to the next door--whither she betook

herself with a firm step and a courage that the night air had not time

to cool. Whatever may be, in other ways, alleged against it, the

darkness is friendly to errands such as this. Under night’s indulgent

mantle neighbourly borrowing loses much of its terror; although as an

offset to this advantage, we must remember that it is not less easy to

refuse a favour than to ask one, in the dark. And for all Mrs.

Holmroyd’s confidence, she poised her uplifted knuckles with something

more than deliberation before the panels of the next door, rehearsing

her summons once or twice, with the nicest assessment of force

necessary, before the fingers fell.

The summons that ensued betrayed her. At a crisis, it seemed, she was no

surer than her son. The knock confessed itself the furtive suppliant’s

knock; the ingratiatory knuckle-usage of one with a favour to ask. The

bearer of a benefit, the repayer of a loan, the bringer of good tidings,

rap resolutely, joyously. The act is confident and free, not furtive and

repressed, burdened with the fear of knocking too loud lest it raise

expectation over high within.

Oswald had rapped three times at Jobling’s. His mother rapped as many

here before her summons reached the remote and dormant consciousness of

the house. Slippered footsteps trod untidily towards the door, guided in

the darkness by hands that slid along alternate walls. Her eyes, now

capable of differentiating the degrees of darkness, knew when the door

opened by reason of the deeper dark beyond--for all it opened very

little. No wider, indeed, than to make way for a peering and suspicious

nose that sniffed the outer darkness without a sound, as if it had been

a rat. Since the nose remained motionless and the door betrayed no

disposition to open wider, Mrs. Holmroyd--with a quickening of the heart

beneath her mantle--spoke at last.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Kenway,” she said. The voice was soft,

and in its polite depression singularly like her son’s.

The nose, under this assurance, grew to half a forehead and one eye.

“What! Is that you, Mrs. Holmroyd?” And receiving Mrs. Holmroyd’s answer

that it was, became a whole head and part of a bosom, whilst the

voice--casting its uncertainty aside--assumed a geniality almost

dreadful to the soul of a borrower. Its note of welcome pitched a major

key too high; a tone too bold for borrowing to sustain. Skilful

modulation would be necessary to lead the theme, yet undeclared, into

the confidential minor. “Why, bless me’m!” cried the head and bosom. “I

made sure I couldn’t mistake your voice, Mrs. Holmroyd. Step your ways

in, marm.” The invitation, loudly tendered, that accompanied the

flinging open of the door--as though the earlier suspicion renounced all

further need to exercise itself--struck courage in the face. Courage,

dismayed by such utter confidence reposed in it, shrank hurriedly from

an invitation so compromising to purpose.

“I only just called, Mrs. Kenway....”

“Come in, marm; come in!” the voice repeated. “You’re very welcome.

There’s no need to apologize I’m sure. Don’t stand outside in the damp.”

“Thank you ... thank you,” Mrs. Holmroyd said. “But I didn’t really wish

to trouble you. I only just called to....”

“You’re not troubling me, Mrs. Holmroyd. I’m not to a minute,” urged the

insistent voice. “We don’t see much of one another, for all we’re such

near neighbours. I was only saying so to my husband this dinner time. Do

step forwards, marm.”

Again courage and politeness strove to escape the paralyzing toils of

misplaced friendship; begging to be excused; alleging household

obligations and the need for haste. Mrs. Holmroyd had just called....

Her little boy....

“Aye, to be sure,” the voice agreed, which by its insistent geniality

proclaimed that it suspected nothing and was animated by no more hopeful

motive than friendliness and a love of gossip. “Your little boy’s got

back, marm. I felt sure I heard your front door shut and you calling of

him by name a while ago. I thought it must be him. Voices sounds quite

plain through the passage wall. I often hear your little girl call out

to you after you’ve put her to bed. They’ve not gone to Mayor’s Party

then. I’ve not been home very long myself. A friend of mine’s little son

and daughter got an invite, and she asked me to go and see them before

they went. Real bonny they looked.... My word! Hasn’t there been some

cabs! I don’t know what _you_ think about it, Mrs. Holmroyd,” the

voluble voice pursued, “but I’ve heard a deal of complaints. Why, I know

a case myself. Seven in a family, and not a single invite. Me and you

pays rates and taxes same as anybody else, and they don’t forget us when

it’s gas or water at quarter’s end. But let it be parties and My Word!

They don’t ask _us_ to go to Mansion House and look at childer dancing!”

The current of her genial indignation swept on. It was a strong tide for

a mere borrower to stem. Mrs. Holmroyd, supporting her bosom with one

hand beneath her mantle, yielded to the wordy flood, her purpose

submerged and foundering, her strength and resolution almost spent. Once

or twice her courage faltered. Invention sought to fabricate some motive

for this visit more consonant with pride. But such unworthy subterfuge

would be false to Oswald. Could she, thereafter, face her son? It was

curious how their two places were now reversed; how she feared the

clearness of her son’s eyes, the judgment of his unspoken reproaches as

he had feared hers; how she made her duty towards him, his confidence in

her, the test and mainspring of her present conduct. And, blindly

breasting the verbal current at last, she struck the dreaded shore and

delivered her lips of the purpose that had embarrassed them so long. Not

one listener in a thousand, possibly, (and in the dark) could have

divined what motive force was requisite to articulate these polite and

gentle words: “I wonder if I might venture to trouble you, Mrs.

Kenway.... If you would be so kind....”

The request, squeezed from her reluctant mouth as if it had been blood,

drew to its completion. In thought it had been dreadful; in speech more

dreadful still. Five shillings, insinuated thus, seemed almost sinister.

Her heart recoiled from this creation of her lips. This bastard

offspring, fathered by necessity, shamed her. Furtive and mean it

bespoke its dreadful parentage even in the dark. As it left her lips she

was shamefully aware of a sudden alteration in the stillness. Some door

of interest, she felt, had been abruptly closed. Where her words,

before, had sunk into the bosom of a receptive geniality they were now

repelled as from a sounding-board. “I’m sorry, marm,” the darkness in

the doorway said, and there was a subtle alteration in its tone as if

the damp had chilled it. The voice had quitted its original key and was

now descended into a key more regretfully minor than Mrs. Holmroyd’s

own.

“O, pray ...” Mrs. Holmroyd quickly begged, “ ... don’t mention it, Mrs.

Kenway.”

“Very sorry, marm,” the darkness repeated, showing somewhat less bosom

than before. “--Did I understand you to say five shillings, Mrs.

Holmroyd?”

The question was asked in a tone that let it be clearly understood it

owned a motive no more than formally polite.

“It is no matter, Mrs. Kenway,” Oswald’s mother answered. “Yes ... I did

mention that amount. It would have been a slight convenience. But pray

don’t trouble. I merely thought ... Friday is rather an awkward night.”

The figure in the dark agreed with hearty compliance that Friday was an

awkward night. Everybody (she reflected) found the same. She was very

sorry indeed, marm. But her husband not being at home just then, and her

having to do a bit of shopping shortly, you see.... Why! There. Mrs.

Holmroyd would know how it was.

Mrs. Holmroyd knew thoroughly how it was. Knew too well how it was.

“Otherwise ...” the voice suggested, throwing open a vague doorway to

the possibilities. Mrs. Holmroyd concurred with a rapid “To be sure ...

to be sure. Please forgive me for having troubled you. I only

thought.... It is really of no consequence. How damp it is to-night.”

It really did not matter. It was of no consequence. The three and

ninepence by Waxford’s scales, the basket on his counter, the sausage

and pork pies ordered, as yet all unbegun, her little Oswald keeping

vigil on the kitchen chair--they did not matter. They were of no

consequence.

Despite her growing practical-mindedness so frequently deplored, she

was, at base, no bolder than her boy.

10

She let herself into her home with a due regard for the neighbourly

vigilance, immuring herself not so noiselessly as to betray to these

tell-tale walls a purpose defeated or a conscience shamed. For a moment

after entry she stood, preserving the attitude of an anxious and

expectant listener. But no voice acknowledged her return. Within was

silence, so nicely graduated to her ear that it seemed almost deathly.

Strange terrors take their toll of true maternal hearts. She tore the

veil of silence urgently aside as if it were a sheet that draped some

shape indefinite and dreadful, saying:

“Oswald!”

“Yes, mother.”

At that she drew breath of reassurance again. Thankfulness returned with

courage, in a tide. Her joy to find him safe was almost great enough to

sweep away the memory of her recent ordeal. She advanced with an

exultant confidence begotten of her son’s voice. At least she had Him.

Him, and that other--not less dear--above. Within these walls was

happiness indeed; a happiness made all the brighter by the darkness of

the world without; a treasure that her soul guarded the more zealously

because she knew it assailed.

Oswald sat where she had left him, on the wooden chair, before all this

paraphernalia for the interrupted manufacture of pies. Traces of

beknuckled tears still gleamed on his cheek-bones, but he had exchanged

the attitude of despair for one of speculation, and his countenance

expressed enquiry more than grief.

His mother entered the kitchen with a smile he had known before--though

its precise significance he did not understand--the smile wrung out of

adversity that, but for her children, might have been tears all told.

“Did Beryl call out to you whilst I was away, Oswald?”

“No mother.”

“I want you to take care of the house for mother a little longer,

Oswald.”

She noted his eyes’ quick reference to the clock, and her glance

faltered as his own had done. “Ten minutes past eight already! I had no

idea. You will be late for the choir practice, Oswald.”

Late for the practice? Did his mother really mean to impose this further

burden upon his unequal shoulders? She saw the courage die out of his

face like an extinguished taper, and added hastily: “But to-night you

cannot go. Mother cannot spare you, Oswald.” She made pretence to appeal

to his magnanimity. “You will not mind for once, will you dear? It is

for _mother’s_ sake.”

He sniffed, touched to the very depths of his ardent hypocrisies by the

appeal. O! what a hypocrite he was. O! what a hypocrite he knew himself

to be.

When Mrs. Holmroyd accosted the November mist once more she bore beneath

her mantle something of whose identity her son knew nothing, though his

eye was vaguely conscious of its presence. He was aware she held some

object of a just perceptible bulk against her bosom, for she had but one

hand to lay upon his neck in going. And whatever the hidden bulk might

be--not that his curiosity was sensibly stirred, for he was still at the

age that reposes its implicit faith in a mother’s wisdom and

goodness--the object had small significance, for she told him as his eye

rested on it: “It is nothing, Oswald. Mother will be back soon.”

Always before to-night, in the times of stress, (and for Oswald’s mother

such times had not been lacking) she had registered and had kept her

vow, that to this dire remedy she should never have recourse, fearful

lest its specious efficacy might enslave her to the habit and lead her

into evils deeper than those from which she sought relief. Crises as

acute as this she had surmounted before, but the citadel does not always

fall to the fiercest onslaught. It falls as frequently to some

half-hearted after-sally, when the powers of resistance are at ebb.

Much the same way she took as that which Oswald had taken earlier, when

his uncertain footsteps led him to Waxford’s shop. But before Waxford’s

flaring frontage could challenge purpose or arrest courage she turned

down one of the shorter side streets into a region where all the streets

(or so it seemed) were side-streets--short and mean and lightless--and

came to a halt at last before the gable of a small and questionable

shop.

The shop was a corner shop, its door sunk in the angle of adjoining

walls that made a salient eave above it. On either side, one in this

street and one in that, two shabby submerged windows let out a shabby

light. The door between them, whose upper half was rectangled into six

panes of dirty glass, let out light of the same shabby quality, from the

same shabby source, that a peep above the red curtains draping its lower

panes showed to be an oillamp suspended from a darkened beam. From the

ceiling of which this beam formed part there hung a host of things more

sombre than the lamp. Garments they seemed to be: dingy overcoats and

skirts, and boots and shoes in clusters, like the corpses of apparel

that had made away with themselves. From the shop floor stacks of other

lifeless clothing rose to meet them. The windows, too, were cumbered

with the ghastly company of apparel; the very putting-off of extremity

and despair, yet offered still again to clad the limbs of living

wretchedness and lend chill warmth to miserable blood. Well might the

spectacle of such a shop send a shiver down Mrs. Holmroyd’s spine. This

way was never meant for her. O! never, never meant for her. To cross

such a threshold was to forfeit something of the cherished purity of a

soul; to touch contamination; to part with somewhat of that principle

which keeps life sweet and conscience clean.

She looked this way. She looked that. God knew it was no crime she

contemplated; only an act of sacrifice. She laid her hand impulsively

upon the brazen doorlatch, worn bright by the application of many

fingers, and chose her moment for the fateful Now.

11

Relieved of that incriminating burden borne beneath her mantle--which

when unwrapped at length, declared itself to be a silver creamjug--the

mother of Oswald emerged from this degraded place of dreadful

barterings. Whilst she had stood without, all terror seemed resident

within. Now, hesitating on the threshold of external darkness, all

terror seemed without. Not till she had spurned the poisonous latch like

an infected hand and flung herself into the bosom of the mist deep

beyond every contact with the tainted yellow light, did reassurance

return. With each step taken pride repossessed itself; she regained

control of her breathing; dared at last to raise her head.

The roaring gas-jets, all flickering up and down the garish Waxford

frontage, occasioned her no tremor. Her chin rose defiantly before the

blast of flame. Tempered in that fiercer forge, her courage faced such

fires as these undaunted. How had this vulgar creature dared to take

advantage of her son!

By this time public interest had begun to respond to the animated

blowing of these pursed and fiery lips. The greasy cleaver had chopped

its way as far as the third apostle, and it was rising and falling with

remorseless energy before the eyes of an attentive audience when Mrs.

Holmroyd entered the shop. The sight of Waxford added to her stature,

and lent a further assertiveness to her chin. Some guilty premonition

passed through his frame as she approached and paralyzed his fleshy arm,

for with the cleaver already raised the purpose in his hardened muscles

faltered all at once and failed. The chopper descended harmlessly upon

the block, and the hand that held it was swift to seize the confiscated

basket. The gesture interpreted apology.

“ ... Your basket, marm.”

Mrs. Holmroyd acknowledged ownership with dignified reserve. At least

the offending Waxford had a more discriminating eye than that other

before which she had so lately quailed. He could distinguish a lady from

mere womankind, even though the lady was reduced to come upon her own

errand at an hour of the night when ladies, strictly speaking, were

supposed to be at home. The tribute of his polite discernment tended to

allay her indignation. Perhaps Oswald’s diffidence had been, to some

extent, at fault. Certainly the porcine Waxford lacked none of the

essentials of deference to Oswald’s mother. She began, “My little boy

...” as a prelude to reproof, but Waxford’s politeness (not altogether

at its ease) insisted on sparing her the trouble of an explanation. “To

be sure, marm,” he told her, wiping the handle of the basket on the

corner of his no longer quite spotless apron, and cleaning his fingers

in turn: all ten of them, for the due manipulation of a lady’s change.

He quite understood. Her little boy had come without the money, and gone

away to fetch it before Waxford could stop him, leaving the basket

behind. He was sorry, marm ... could he send the pork for her? Alfred,

take hold of this here basket and carry it for this here lady. It would

be no trouble, marm. Just as she pleased, marm. Alfred, put the basket

down again. The lady prefers to take it with her.

The quarter-jack from St. Gyles’s chimed out the last quarter before

nine as Mrs. Holmroyd walked hurriedly along the moist and sometimes

greasy flags. All the agony of those recent moments fused, as she

walked, into a transcendent calm. For once again the sacred home was

saved. In a life built on such frail foundations and compounded of such

fragile things, the least shock threatened disaster. And this failure of

her weekly output of savouries would have thrown all her careful

calculations out of truth; would have involved her in an endless train

of embarrassments ridiculous and tragic.

Now she could return swiftly, joyously to the bosom of her family, to

taste once more--after such bitter moments of separation--the true

sweetness of home, and build up--whilst she baked--fresh dreams of hope

and liberty for those she loved.