Mrs Dare, wise woman and excellent housekeeper, had for some time
past been doing her best to cut down her proverbial coat to suit the
exigencies of the shrunken war-time cloth at her disposal.
In other words, she had been curtailing the running expenses of The Red
House so as to bear as lightly as possible on the attenuated income
from St Mary Axe. Income, indeed, in actual fact, St Mary Axe had none.
Mr Dare was, of necessity, living on such remnants of capital as he had
been able to save from the stranded ship.
So Mrs Dare found another place for her housemaid, prevailed on her
cook, who was a treasure and had been with her over five years, to
remain as ‘general,’ with promise of loss of title and reinstatement
of position as soon as times mended, and with Honor’s assistance and
an occasional helping hand from Mrs Skirrow, managed to get along very
well.
Mrs Skirrow had always been a source of amusement at The Red House. She
had a point of view of her own and a sense of humour, and an almost
unfailing cheerfulness amid circumstances which drove many of her
neighbours to drink.
Mrs. Skirrow did not drink. She had too much hard-earned common-sense,
and she could not afford it. With three men more or less on her hands,
and mostly more, it took every half-crown she could earn at her charing
to keep the home together.
But the war had marvellously altered all that. Not only had she no
men to keep but the boot was on the other leg. Her men were actually
helping to keep her. She woke up of a night now and then and lay
blissfully wondering if it was all a dream, or if she had died and
gone to heaven. To be kept by her lazy ones! It seemed altogether too
good to be true. And yet every Friday, when she drew her money, proved
that true it was. No wonder she hoped with all her heart that it might
go on for long enough,--so long, of course, as none of them went and
got themselves killed. But men were as a rule so contrary that she
lived in daily expectation of one or other doing that same.
For the first two months,--due possibly to some default on her part in
filling up and sending in the necessary but bewildering papers,--or
it might be to the general muddle at Head-Quarters--she received no
money at all. So she kept steadily on with her own work, and having
only herself to keep, got along very nicely, meanwhile never ceasing to
push her claims with all her powers, and few were better equipped in
that way. And Mrs Dare was kept fully informed of everything with racy
comments on all and sundry.
Then at last, to Mrs. Skirrow’s great satisfaction, the matter was
arranged, and by some extraordinary method of calculation, promoted
without doubt by herself and argued with characteristic vehemence and
possibly just a trifle of exaggeration here and there, her money began
to come in.
She received nearly ten pounds of arrears in a lump sum, and was to get
twenty-three shillings a week.
She had never had ten pounds all at once in her life before, nor an
assured income of over a pound a week without needing to lift her hand.
And, strange to say--yet not so very strange, seeing that she was Mrs
Skirrow,--she did not lose her head and go on the ramp as some she knew
had done.
In the first place she bought herself a new dress and coat and hat,
such as she had vainly imagined herself in, any time this ten years,
and fancied herself exceedingly in them.
The choosing and buying of that dress and coat and hat, the going from
shop to shop and from window to window, comparing styles and prices,
with the delicious knowledge that the money was in her pocket and she
was in a position to pick and choose to her heart’s content, was in
itself one of the greatest treats she had ever known, and she spread it
over quite a considerable period.
And when she turned up one night in her new rig-out, to explain to Mrs
Dare that she would not be able to come to her next week as she was
going to the seaside, Mrs Dare did not at first recognise her.
When she did she complimented her on her taste and good sense in taking
a holiday and hoped she would come back all the better for it.
“I will that. You bet your life, mum! Fust reel holiday I’ve had
for twenty years an’ I’m going to enjoy it. Seaside and decently
dressed--that’s my idee of a reel holiday. It’s not some folk’s though.
There’s me neighbour, Mrs Clemmens, now. She had no money for a while,
same as meself. Then she got twenty pound all in one lump. She’s got a
heap o’ boys at the war. And what did she do with it? She gathered all
her old cronies--an’ a fine hot lot some of ’em are, I can tell you,
mum!--and she took ’em all up to London, and fed ’em, and drank ’em,
and music-halled ’em, till they was all blind and th’ hull lot of ’em
was run in at last, and in the mornin’ she hadn’t enough left to pay
the fines. A fair scandal, I calls it!”
“Disgraceful!” assented Mrs Dare. “I’m rejoiced to know that your
common-sense condemns that kind of thing, and I hope you’ll have a real
good time and come back all the better for it.”
“I will, mum. You bet your boots on that!”
And she did. She journeyed down to Margate in a ‘Ladies Only’
third-class carriage, and bore herself with such dignity that her
fellow-travellers were divided as to whether she kept a stylish public
somewhere in the West End or a Superior Servants’ Registry Office. She
picked out a cheap but adequate lodging, she revelled in all the joys
of Margate, ate many winkles, and went to ‘the pictures’ at least once
each day, and the whole grand excursion, fares included, totalled up to
no more than thirty shillings,--“an’ the best investment ever I made
in me life,” she told Mrs Dare over her scrubbing brush, the following
week, “an’ I’m thinkin’ I’ll run down for th’ week end now and again,
if so be’s this blessed war keeps on a bit.”
Mrs Dare found it really refreshing, amid the abounding troubles of the
times, to come across someone who had not only no fault to find with
them, but was actually, by reason of them, enjoying quite unexpected
prosperity.
For her own heart had been heavy enough in those days, what with the
Colonel’s illness and her husband’s very natural depression as to the
future outlook.
He had come in one night, some time before, in a state of most
justifiable exasperation. And yet the whole thing was so amazingly
impudent that in telling his wife of it he could scarce forbear a
grim smile. At the same time it was an eye-opener as to the truculent
immorality of the firms he had been dealing with for years past in the
most perfect good faith, and he vowed he would never forget it.
Two of his best customers, one at Hamburg and the other at Frankfort,
owing him between them close on £5000 had coolly sent him word that,
as no money could be sent out of the country, they had invested the
amounts due to him in the German War Loan and would hold the scrip, and
the interest as it accrued, in his name. Both principal and interest
would be paid in due course, that is to say--when victory crowned the
German arms.
It took Mrs Dare some time to realise that it was not merely a
distorted German form of practical joke. But her husband assured her
that it was not.
“I had heard of it being done,” he said bitterly. “But I never expected
either Stein or Rheinberg would play so low a game on me. I’ve turned
over hundreds of thousands of pounds with both of them, and now--this!
It’s damnable!”
“Perhaps the Government forced them to it.”
“It’s dirty low business anyway, and it won’t make for German credit
when things settle down again.”
But presently there came to him a bit of good fortune which made him
feel almost himself again.
Business men who travel daily to and from town by train fall almost
inevitably into sets, who occupy always the same compartment and the
same seats in it, and among whom exists a certain good-fellowship and
friendliness.
In John Dare’s set was a certain John Christianssen, of Norwegian
extraction, long established in London in the timber business, which
his father had founded sixty years before.
Christianssen was British born, his father having been naturalised. He
had two sons with him in the business, and both had got commissions
through the Officers’ Training Corps, and were heart and soul in their
work and eager for the front.
More than once he had lamented to Mr Dare his loss in them just at
this juncture. Not that he grudged them to the service of his adopted
country but that their going made him feel, as he said, as if he had
lost his right hand and one of his feet.
Mr Dare sympathised with him but assured him it was better to have a
healthy body even with only one hand and one foot than to have no body
left. And Christianssen, knowing the nature of the business in St Mary
Axe, understood, and thought the matter out.
And so it came to pass, one morning when they got out at Cannon Street,
that he said to Mr Dare, “I will walk your way, if you don’t mind. I
want to talk to you.”
And when they reached the office, where one small office-boy now
represented the busy staff of old, he sat down in the second chair and
lit a cigar, and said, “I know pretty well, from what I have heard and
from what you have told me, Dare, how you are situated here. I have
a proposal. I can’t go on without help. I want to be across in Norway
and I want to be here at the same time. Now that Jack and Eric are away
my hands are tied. There is huge business to be done with all this
hutting going on, and I’m going to miss my share unless I make proper
provision. And that is you! What do you say?”
“It’s killing to be out of work, which I never have been before for
over thirty years. My business is gone, as you know, and most of my
capital. Some of it’s invested in the German War Loan----”
“No!”
“Yes! The low-scaled rascals, instead of remitting what they owe me,
write to say they have loaned my money to their infernal government
and it will be repaid with interest when the war is over--meaning, of
course, over in the way they would like it.”
“That is low business!”
“Business! I call it simple dirty robbery. But it’s not only the fact
that they’ve done this, but--well, I just feel that I would be glad
never to have any dealings with any German again as long as I live.”
“I do not wonder. But that is all the better for me. We have known one
another now, what is it--ten, fifteen years? Come in with me. We can
arrange satisfactory terms. You see, my lads may come back, or they
may not. My wonder, when I read the papers, is that any man of them
all ever comes out of it alive. But even if they are not killed I am
doubting much if they will find office-stools agreeable sitting for the
rest of their lives. If they do come back it will be the overseas part
they will want. So there it is. What do you say?”
“I can’t tell you what I feel, Christianssen. The very thought of it
makes a new man of me. But--I don’t know the first thing about timber.”
“If you will relieve me of the office work and financing, it will be
good business all round. Details as to woods, etc., you can pick up by
degrees. I have a good staff here, but the best staff in the world is
the better for being looked after. If I can be free to get across to
Norway and feel quite safe in going, it will mean much to me and to the
business. You will say yes?”
“I’ll say yes with more in my heart than I can put into words,” and
they shook hands on it.
So John Dare took up a new lease of life and hope, and was himself
again and twenty years younger than he had been any time this last
three months.
And presently, for his still greater comfort and relief of mind, came
Uncle Tony’s unexpected legacy to Mrs Dare. It was a veritable Godsend.
For the heaviest part of his burden, during these late months of no
income and vanishing capital, had been the fear of what might befall
his home-folks when the worst came to the worst.
The thought of it had kept him awake of a night and plunged him into
the depths. He had racked his tired brain to find some way out of
his difficulties. But it was like trying to climb a huge black wall
whose top shut out even the sight of heaven. For always the grim fact
remained that his business was utterly gone and he saw no prospect of
its revival.
By the grace of God and Uncle Tony and John Christianssen he was
delivered from torment. The home-folk were safe whatever happened, and
he took up his new duties with all the enthusiastic energy of a heart
retrieved from despair.