LIFE on the _Westmouth_ being too exacting to permit one to count the
hours, Robert Lancaster came to the end of his training there with a
sudden jerk that almost astonished him. Fifty lads were taken off the
books, of whom he found himself to be one; some of them deciding for the
merchant service, were despatched to the Home at Limehouse for that
purpose; others, qualified in regard to measurement and desires, only
waited for the brigantine to arrive for their names to be taken off the
Watch Bill, and to resign their numbers to other lads. The old captain,
meeting Robert on the upper deck, honoured him with five minutes’
conversation, giving him a word of counsel, and directing him to give the
old ship a call whenever the chance to do so offered.
“Don’t forget, my lad, that now your opportunity is coming to show us all
that the trouble and money you have cost have been well laid out.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Keep yourself straight; be obedient to your officers, remember that the
Navy has a fine, a glorious reputation, which you must help to keep up.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Above all, be a credit to the _Westmouth_, and see that we have good
news of you. That will do.”
“Pardon, sir. Any objection to my having a day in London ’fore I join
the—”
“To visit friends?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you please,” said the old captain with his sharp air of courtesy.
See Robert Lancaster clearing his locker down on the lower deck and
distributing souvenirs to his colleagues; a part of the inside of a watch
to one; a copy of “Kidnapped” to another; several pieces of rare old
string to the boy from Poplar, now, under the stress of _Westmouth_
discipline, a contented, optimistic lad. See Robert Lancaster going off
in the gig with six shillings tied in his handkerchief, being part of the
prize for swimming gained by him at the last competition, and taking
train at the small station for Fenchurch Street. See him arriving near
the old neighbourhood and walking with a fine, sailor-like roll in his
wide trousers and open-necked jacket towards Pimlico Walk, in which
thoroughfare, now it seemed to him more preposterously narrow than ever,
children stopped the playing of tipcat to stare at him open-mouthed, and
women going into miniature shops arrested themselves in order to
ascertain, from feelings of vague curiosity, his destination.
“No one about?” he asked in the doorway of Mrs. Bell’s millinery
establishment. The small window was still set out with magnificent
feathered hats, but there appeared to be a suggestion of good taste in
the arrangement that had in the old days been absent.
“Yes,” said a little girl sitting on a high chair behind the counter,
“there’s me.”
“No one else?”
“Who else d’you want?” asked the girl cautiously.
“Isn’t Mrs. Bell about?”
“She’s been bedridden for the last six months, if that’s what you call
being about.”
“And Trixie?”
“You mean Miss Bell?”
“Miss Bell, then.”
The girl stepped from the stool, and went to the foot of the stairs.
“Shawp!” she cried. She returned at once to the counter with a manner
slightly less defensive. “She sits upstairs and reads to the old gel in
the middle of the day, and I’m in charge down ’ere. When she comes down
I go up, see? It don’t do to leave the place without someone.”
There was a rustle on the lower stairs.
“Bobbie!” A delighted exclamation.
“’Ullo, Trix,” he said nervously. “How’s the world using you?”
“’Aven’t you grown?”
“You’ve been at that game, too. I s’pose I was about the last person
that was in your mind.”
“Yes,” said Trixie Bell, “the very last. Me and mother were just then
talking about you upstairs. Isn’t your face brown, too?”
“Yours isn’t brown,” said Robert, with a clumsy attempt at compliment,
“but it’s got every other good quality.”
“’Tilderann,” commanded Trixie Bell, insistently, “go upstairs and sit
with mother at once, and tell her that Mr. Lancaster has called.” The
little girl slid from the high stool again and disappeared reluctantly.
“Up the stairs, I said,” remarked Trixie, looking round the corner after
her, “I didn’t ask you to wait on the second step listening.”
Miss Bell returned demurely to the inner side of the counter.
“Girls,” she said, with an air of maturity, “want a lot of looking
after.”
“Who looks after you?” asked Bobbie, leaning over the counter.
“Oh, I can take care of myself.”
“For one day, at any rate, I’m going to take care of you. Give me a
kiss.”
“Bobbie! People can see through the shop window.”
“You won’t give me a kiss?”
“There’s a time,” said the pleasant-faced young woman, with great
preciseness, “and a place for everything, and this is neither the time
nor—”
One advantage of being trained as a British sailor is that you can vault
over a counter and jump back again before anyone has time to protest.
“You’ll make me cross,” said Trixie, with great confusion and delight.
“Give it back to me, then,” suggested Robert.
“I fancy I see myself doing that,” said Trixie, ironically.
“I’ve fancied it a lot of times,” remarked Robert. “Now it seems to me
we’ve arrived at what you may call reality.”
“Of course,” said Trixie, leaning on the counter and keeping one eye on
the window, “it isn’t exactly as though we were strangers, is it? What I
mean to say is, we’ve known each other, Bobbie, for a long time, and
you’ll be seventeen next birthday—”
“Don’t argue,” said Robert. “Do what I ask you.”
“It’ll ’ave to be a very little one,” said Miss Bell, seriously. And
leaned forward.
“Thanks,” said Robert. “That’s what I’ve been looking forward to.”
“Now, you must give up all this nonsense,” declared Trixie, with a sage
air, and glancing at herself in the panel looking-glass, “and behave.
Will you come upstairs and see mother?”
“I thought p’raps you and me might go out this afternoon for a bit of a
outing. I’ve got to rejoin my ship this evening, and I shan’t have many
chances of seeing you when I’m down at Plymouth.”
“There’s something in that,” admitted Trixie. “I’ll see if I can get a
lady friend of mine from Pitfield Street to look in for a few hours.”
She raised her voice and called at the foot of the stairs. “’Tilderann!
Come down this minute.”
The girl obeyed, remarking in a grumbling undertone that the place was a
perfect treadmill, and that for her part she envied the folk in
Pentonville; she went to the doorway and reproved two infants outside for
breathing on the glass, in good, well-chosen, and effective terms.
“Don’t put your arm round my waist, Bobbie,” whispered Trixie as they
went up the dim, narrow staircase. “Besides, there’s a buckle on my
belt. Mother, ’ere’s a gentleman come to call on you.”
Mrs. Bell, raising her head from the white pillow, gave a chuckle of
recognition. Robert, with his cap off, made his way round the bedstead,
which seemed nearly to fill the room, but not quite, and shook hands with
the large invalid.
“My poor old ’ead,” she remarked, jovially, “gets in such a fluster,
sometimes, that I can’t remember nothing, and when the gel said Mr.
Lancaster was in the shop it took me minutes to think who she meant.
D’you think Trixie’s growed?”
“Growed up and growed ’andsome,” said Robert. Mrs. Bell gave a sigh of
content, closing her eyes for a moment. “And how are you, ma’am? On the
mend, I ’ope.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Bell, opening her eyes and speaking loudly, “I’ve got
nothing to complain of.” She lowered her voice, and added
confidentially, so that Trixie should not hear, “May pop off at any
moment.”
Trixie having explained the proposal that Robert had made, suggested that
she should go round now to engage the services of the millinery friend in
Pitfield Street. Her mother agreed cheerfully.
“Of course,” said the old lady in a very loud tone, “I’ve been used to a
active life, and naturally enough it goes somewhat against the grain for
me to be kep’ in one room for monce and monce. Otherwise I feel as
well—” Trixie went out of the room, closing the door, and Mrs. Bell
stopped and winked solemnly. “It’d never do to let her know the truth,”
she whispered. “I always like to pretend before her I’m getting better.
It’s a rare game sometimes the dodges I ’ave to get up to so that she
shouldn’t know how bad I am.”
“Trixie isn’t a bad sort,” remarked Robert.
“She’s my daughter,” said Mrs. Bell.
Before that excellent young lady returned poor Mrs. Bell and Robert had a
long, confidential talk. The cheerful old lady regretted that her time
had arrived before Trixie had become a grown woman, but this regret was
tempered by confidence in her daughter, and by a promise which had been
given by Miss Threepenny to come and live with Trixie when all was over.
There breathed pride in the statement that her doctor from New North Road
could find no English name for her illness, and had been compelled to
fall back on the Latin tongue to give it title; Mrs. Bell’s old head
trembled with gratification as she told Robert of this.
“D’you mind ’olding my ’and, Bobbie?” she asked, interrupting herself.
“I feel so much more contented somehow when someone’s ’olding me ’and.
Thanks! As I was telling you—”
The doctor had some time since recommended that she should be taken away
to the seaside, a procedure which might prolong her life for a few
months, but the old lady congratulated herself upon having had the
shrewdness to reply that Hoxton was as good a place to die in as any
other, and that she had not been saving money all her life in order to
spend it foolishly on herself at the end. The good soul seemed quite
happy; everybody, she said, was very kind to her, and Trixie, who in
former days had been somewhat masterful towards her, now waited on her
“hand and foot.” Mrs. Bell declared that she only wished everybody could
be looked after at the end of all as effectively. Trixie, returning with
her substitute, came upstairs in a hat which Robert, on being appealed to
for an opinion, declared looked like ten thousand a year, and they said
good-bye to Mrs. Bell, Trixie promising to send up ’Tilderann and to
return herself at the earliest possible hour.
“Don’t ’urry,” said the old lady. “And, Bobbie! Come back one moment.
Trixie, you go down.” Robert obeyed. “I shan’t be seeing you again,”
said the old lady brightly. “If so be as I should meet your poor mother,
I shall tell her what a fine lad you’ve growed to.” Robert bent and
kissed the large white face. “Be good, won’t you,” she whispered
brokenly, “to her?”
“You can make yourself quite sure about that, ma’am,” said Robert.
Before going west on this sunny afternoon, the young lady insisted that
Robert should accompany her for a short tour through certain streets in
Hoxton, where her lady acquaintances resided, which same young women told
each other afterwards that they had not realized what the word pride
really meant until seeing Trixie with her young man. They looked at Ely
Place from the dwarf posts at the Kingsland Road end, where towzled-hair,
half-dressed, grubby babies played games with mud and swore at one
another, but the two agreed that they had no desire to go through the
Place. One more girl acquaintance in a Hoxton street shop in whose sight
Robert had to be paraded, and then the two young people, walking down
into Old Street, took a tram for Bloomsbury.
“You pay for yourself,” said Trixie Bell definitely, “I’ll pay for
myself.”
“No fear,” protested Robert, “I pay for both to-day. This is my
beanfeast.”
“Then I go no further,” declared the young woman. “Agree to that,
Bobbie, or down the steps I go.”
“You are obstinate,” said Robert. “I never saw such a one for ’aving her
own way.”
“Not much use having anybody else’s way,” she said. “Bloomsbury, one,”
she said to the conductor.
The principle thus definitely laid down being adhered to during the
afternoon, Robert found himself unable in consequence to assume the air
of condescension and patronage that he had promised to wear; indeed, Miss
Bell took the entire management of the afternoon into her own hands, with
a quaint air of decision which surprised Robert and interested him, so
that when at the end of the tram line she said, “Regent’s Park,” it was
to Regent’s Park they went; on Robert in his reckless way suggesting a
’bus, she said, “Walk, it’s no distance,” and that was the mode of
transport adopted. In Regent’s Park they sat on chairs near to
sweet-smelling oval bouquets of flowers, watching the white-sashed
nursemaids and the children, and whilst Robert (to Trixie’s content)
smoked a large, important cigar, she chattered away about her plans for
the future. Trixie revived the old ambition of a milliner’s
establishment, with French words in white letters on the window, in some
position not too far distant from Pimlico Walk, so that old customers
should be preserved, whilst new ones were being caught; Robert watched
her admiringly as she sketched this magnificent project, noting the
decision of her chin and the flush of interest on her attractive face.
The cigar finished, or nearly finished (for Robert was not yet a
confirmed smoker), they walked arm-in-arm through the gates to the upper
portion of the park, where there were sheep to be looked at, and near to
the fountain, small debating societies, that seemed to grow on the grass
in the style of mushrooms, and were made up of grubby men, arguing, as it
seemed, on every topic of which they were ignorant, with here a reference
to John Stuart Mill, and there satire at the expense of Apostles. Near
to one of these groups Robert and Trixie stopped.
“As for your so-galled Queen, my goot Anglish friends,” a foreign
gentleman with no collar shouted in the centre of the mushroom, “it don’t
dake me long times to gif you my obinion about her and all her plooming
Gofernment.”
“Now you’re beggin’ the question,” said his opponent. “Let’s keep to the
point at issue. If you’ve ever read Plito, you would have been aware
that—”
“I’m not dalkin’ about Blato,” said the foreigner, with excited gesture.
“I’m dalkin’ about the bresent day and the stupid, foolish idea that you
Anglish are a free nation. My obinion of your Queen, my fellow, is
simply these. She’s—”
Not quite clear what the foreign gentleman wanted to say, and impossible
to hear what he did say, for at that moment a sailor lad edged his way
through the crowd, two brown hands seized the neck of his collarless
shirt, and at once the two—Robert and the foreign critic—were running
away pell-mell to Gloucester Gate, the foreigner forced to go at a good
pace despite his struggles, and being thrown eventually well into the
roadway outside the park. Robert returned to Trixie a little heated with
the run; Trixie’s blue dotted blouse danced with delight and admiration.
“That’ll learn him,” said Robert, darkly.
In the Zoological Gardens they walked through the long house where lions
and tigers lodge, and Robert kissed Trixie in full sight of a very sulky
old lion, who had a bed-sitting room near to the end, making the lion use
an exclamation of annoyance and envy that cannot well be printed. Then
they went out into the gardens to see long, thin, ridiculous legs with
birds perched riskily atop, and had a long conversation with one of the
highly-coloured parrots, who were all talking at once, and seemed, like
the debaters outside, to be denouncing somebody, and in similarly raucous
voices.
“At tea, Bobbie,” said Trixie, with a touch of her decisive manner, “I
want to talk to you.”
“You’ve been doing that the last hour or two,” he said, good temperedly.
“Ah, but I mean seriously,” she said.
At tea on the gravelled space near to the sleepy owls Robert encountered
friends whose presence deferred the weighty talk, friends in the person
of the angel from Folkestone, now clearly Mrs. Customs Officer, her
husband and a large-eyed astonished baby in a white beef-eater hat. The
angel came over from her table on recognizing Robert and declared that
the news of this meeting would do poor uncle more good than all the
embrocation in the world.
“Allow me,” said Robert with importance, “to introduce my”—he
coughed—“_fiancée_.”
Trixie on this introduction assumed a distant manner, and sat alone with
a reticent air, while Robert went over to speak to long Mr. Customs, and
to dance the amazed infant high into the air. The angel had grown very
matronly; the Customs seemed to be well under her control, insomuch that
he never commenced a sentence without finding himself instantly arrested
and brushed aside by his wife. On Robert rallying the angel on this, the
angel laughed good-humouredly, declaring that it was well for one or the
other to be master, and prophesying that some day Robert would find this
out for himself, whereupon Robert insisted that women must not be too
tyrannical, and endeavoured to enlist the Customs on his side in the
argument, but the Customs shook his head vaguely (being it seemed with no
grievance to complain of), and begged not to be dragged into the
discussion.
“What name was it you called me just now?” demanded Trixie, when he had
returned to her. Robert explained, and Trixie’s young forehead cleared.
“That reminds me,” she said, resting one small shoe on the bar of
Robert’s chair, “I want to talk sense now.”
“Why?”
“I want you,” she said slowly and carefully, “to promise me—”
“I’ll promise anything you like.”
“To promise me that you’ll give up all idea of being a sailor, and take
up some occupation on land.”
Robert shifted his chair and Trixie’s foot slipped to the gravel. He
re-tied his lanyard with great particularity, humming a tune. Trixie,
fearful of the reply, drew a heart with the ferrule of her parasol on the
gravel.
“Not me!” he said decidedly.
The heart on the gravel found itself rubbed out sharply and rendered
illegible.
“You think it over, dear,” said Trixie Bell.
“I shan’t think it over,” replied Robert Lancaster sturdily. “It’d be a
mean trick to do after all they’ve spent on my training.”
“I don’t see how it would affect them.”
“I’m not going to do it, Trixie.”
“So long as you earn a honest living—”
“Look ’ere,” burst out Robert impetuously, “I can’t argue with girls. My
mind’s quite made up, and I’m not going to alter it.”
“That means, then,” said Miss Bell, swallowing something, “that you don’t
care for me.”
“It don’t mean anything of the kind,” protested Robert. “It’s a question
of duty.”
“You’d easily get a good berth on shore,” she argued, “and earn good
money, and then we could see each other pretty of’en. As it is, I may
not see you from one year’s end to the other.”
“Absence makes the ’eart grow fonder.”
“Yes,” said the young woman pointedly, “in books.”
“Well,” remarked Robert, after a pause, “now that we’ve cleared up this
argument, ’ave some more tea.”
“No, thank you,” said Trixie with reserve. “I think I must be getting
along ’ome. Looks as though we shall ’ave a shower presently, I think.”
“Trixie,” he said, trying to take her hand, “don’t be a young silly.”
“After that complimentary remark,” she said rising, “it’s most certainly
time for me to be off. To be told in the Zoo above all places in the
world that I’m a silly—”
“I didn’t say you was a silly,” urged Robert with great perturbation, “I
asked you not to go and be one. Do stop, and let’s be good friends the
same like—”
He was following the indignant young woman when the waiter interposed,
offering a delicate hint to the effect that his services were usually
deemed worthy of reward; by the time Robert had found threepence Trixie
had disappeared in the direction of the camels. Other visitors watched
the hurried distracted efforts of the scarlet-faced sailor lad on his
erratic voyage of discovery with as much interest as though he had been
an escaped resident of the Gardens.
A gloomy young man strode down Great Portland Street an hour later, and,
losing his way more than once, because he was too much annoyed to speak
to policemen, found himself at last in Holborn and eventually in Fetter
Lane. On the two middle-aged ladies in the shop saying that Mr.
Myddleton West was not in, and had indeed removed, Robert, muttering that
this was just like his luck, turned away with a decision to return to
Grays some two hours earlier than he had intended. On board the
_Westmouth_ one was at any rate free from illogical young women; free
also from the irritating risk of taking wrong turnings. A swift
hysterical shower of rain started.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he said gruffly.
“My fault,” remarked the man with whom he had come in collision. “I
ought not to hold my open umbrella in front of me.”
“Mr. West, I believe, sir.”
“Young Hoxton!”
“That’s me, sir.”
“You look quite a man,” said Myddleton West genially. “Come back to my
office, and talk.”
“You look ten years younger, sir, than when I see you last.”
“I am ten years younger,” said West. “On second thoughts we might eat.
Do you feel like a good square meal?”
“I’m off me feed just for the present. Had rather a whack in the eye
this afternoon.”
“That’s only a prelude to good luck,” said Myddleton West, with new
optimism. He seemed to be taking cheerful views of the world; appeared
brighter than in the old days, and the lad felt inclined to resent it.
“Providence is very fair in a general way.”
Turning into a dim, insignificant passage off Fleet Street, they found a
doorway, as if by accident, which led them (also, as it seemed, by a
series of misadventures) to a square old-fashioned dining-room of the
early Victorian type. Several men were seated at the wooden tables
eating; two or three Americans with note-books were being supplied by one
of the old waiters with a quantity of new and incorrect information about
the old eating-house, enlivened by rare anecdotes of celebrities. In
five minutes there was set before West and Robert Lancaster a small
mountain made up of admirable strata of pigeons, of oysters, and of
steak. Robert began by gazing absently at the dish before him, and
thinking about Trixie; the smell of appetizing food changed his thoughts,
and he presently set to with admirable appetite.
“My great news can easily be told,” said Myddleton West across the table.
“I was married last week.”
“Good business!” remarked Robert. “Who is the lady, sir?”
“There is but one.”
“But I thought she’d decided—”
“They never do that,” remarked West.
“She used to like talking about you, sir, to me when I was in the
hospital. I always thought it would ’appen some day.”
“I’m ordered out to some God-forsaken place in Siberia,” said Myddleton
West. “They are making a new railway, and there’s a lot of excitement, I
believe. Miss Margaret was good enough to insist upon marrying me,
before I went. When I come back my wife will give up her nursing
business and we are going to settle down and enjoy life.”
“Good deal to be said for the old fashions,” said Robert wisely.
“Independence is all very well, but I don’t like to see it carried too
far. Not with the ladies at any rate,” he added.
“Tell me all about yourself,” urged Myddleton West. “My wife will be
anxious to hear. My wife,” West seemed proud to repeat these two words,
“was always interested in you.”
Robert felt distinctly better when he had come out into Fleet Street and
had said a respectful good-bye to Myddleton West; this partly because of
the excellent meal and partly because of the friendly chat. The shower
had finished and he walked East. Not until he had nearly reached
Fenchurch Street, with only five minutes to wait for his train, did he
remember that he had a high important grievance which careful attention
would, as he knew, nurture into lasting remorse. He went slowly up the
stairs of the station, and thinking with a desolate sigh of women in
general and of Miss Beatrice Bell in particular. At the top of the
staircase he caught sight (his look being downcast) of Miss Threepenny.
“Well, you’re a nice young gentleman,” said the little woman,
satirically, “I don’t think. Fancy coming to London and not waiting to
see me. This,” added the mite, with a twinkle in her bright bead-like
eyes, “is what you call constancy, I s’pose.”
“There’s no such thing as constancy,” growled Robert. “Not in this
world, at any rate.”
“Shows what you know about it,” declared the little woman. “Come over
’ere; I’ve a friend I want to interduce you to.”
“I’ve only got five minutes before my train goes.”
“Five minutes is ample. Come along.”
To the side of the bookstall Miss Threepenny convoyed Robert; once in
harbour there bade him on no account to stir, and puffing off like a busy
little tug to the waiting-room, returned immediately with that trim yacht
Trixie Bell in tow, whom she also brought to anchor at the side of the
bookstall.
“I’ll go and see what platform your train starts from,” then cried the
little tug.
“Bobbie,” said the well-appointed yacht, penitently, to the man-of-war,
“I’m—I’m so sorry if I went and made myself look like a stupid this
afternoon.”
“Trixie,” said the man-of-war, coming dangerously close to the side of
the neat craft, “if anybody’s to blame, it’s me. Only—”
“We shall quarrel again, dear,” said Trixie Bell, sedately, “if you talk
like that. You’re quite right in what you’ve made up your mind to do,
and I respect you all the more for it, and if you’re away ten seconds, or
if you’re away ten years, I shall always be the same and—”
The man-of-war saluted with so much promptitude that a newspaper boy in
the bookstall, safe in ambush behind an illustrated journal, made
ventriloquial comment. Miss Threepenny hurried up.
“Now run, Bobbie,” said the tiny woman, breathlessly. “You’ll just catch
it, and—good luck to you!”
He caught the train as it moved out of the station and jumped into a
third-class compartment. When he had regained his breath he leaned his
bare head delightedly out of the window to enjoy the cool air that had
come after the shower.
“Upon my word,” he said, to Stepney Station, with some astonishment, “I
begin to think that I don’t half understand women.”
From this remark it will be seen that Robert Lancaster, formerly child of
the State, and shortly to enter the service of his great parent, was now
no longer very young. Wherefore it is here that one may prepare to take
leave of him.