know. I didn’t tell the mater. It was later on that I got this smash
of my right foot. It happened at—I’ve forgotten the name; some damned
little village on the Flemish border. I was lucky in a way, the shrapnel
missed me. It was falling stonework that biffed up my foot. There was a
building, a sort of school, I should think. It got blown to smithereens.
It was rather a nasty mess-up. I was there for seven hours before they
found me—Hullo! I see the mater standing at the gate.”
The horse nearly bolted with the violence of Giles’s waving arms....
The dinner—all the dishes that Giles specially loved—was finished. With
his arm round his mother’s waist and a cigar in the corner of his mouth,
he led her into the warm comfort of the white-paneled drawing-room.
“You won’t mind my smoking in here to-night, mater?”
“My dear boy!”
They sat in silence, watching the red glow of the log fire. Suddenly
Giles said:
“I say, mater, do you know an awfully rum thing Geddes told me?”
His mother looked up.
“I think perhaps I know. Do you mean in the—cemetery?”
Giles nodded, puffing at his cigar in little nervous inhalations.
“Yes. I knew. I saw it, of course. I’ve sat and wondered.”
“Such a rum thing to do! What do you think we ought to do about it,
mater?”
He saw his mother lean forward; the waves of silver hair seemed to
enshrine the beautiful lines of her drawn face; her voice came whispering:
“Hadn’t we better leave it, Giles?... Perhaps he really did die for
England?”
The young man glanced at her quickly. He saw her aged and broken by the
war. He thought of his brother.... Then he caught sight of his own face
in the mirror, lean, youthful, vigorous. The old tag flashed through his
mind:
“They also serve who only stand and wait.”
He thrust away that emotional expression, and in the manner of his kind
stayed silent, rigid, with his back to the fire. And suddenly he said:
“I say, mater, won’t you play me something? Chopin, or one of those
Russian Johnnies you play so rippingly?”
“OLD IRON”
“OLD IRON”
You know how the story goes, of course. Husband and wife just about to
retire to bed. Wife yawns, husband knocks out his pipe on the grate and
remarks:
“Well, better turn in, I suppose.”
Wife replies:
“Yes”; then adds languidly:
“I meant to call round to ask the Cartwrights to dinner on Thursday.”
Husband, after prolonged pause:
“I’ll pop round and ask them now, if you like. They never go to bed till
very late.”
“I wish you would, dear.”
Husband pulls on a cloth cap and goes out. Wife yawns again, and picks up
_The Ladies’ Boudoir_, and idly examines charmeuse gown, and notes the
prices of gloves at Foxtrot’s & Fieldfern’s. Yawns again more audibly.
Collects sewing and places it in work-basket. Takes the kitten out and
locks it up in the scullery. Yawns, and walks languidly upstairs. Turns
on the light and spends fifteen minutes examining face at various angles
in the glass. Begins to disrobe. Thinks sleepily: “Tom’s a long time.”
Brushes out her hair and admires it considerably. Conceives a new way of
dressing it for future festivities. Disrobes farther. Yawns. Disrobes
completely and re-robes—dressing-gown.
“It’s too bad being all this time!”
Vitality slightly stirred in the direction of resentment and a kind of
mild apprehension. Lies on the bed and drowsily reviews the experiences
of the day. Dreams.... Suddenly starts with a consciousness of cold.
Gropes for her wrist-watch. _A quarter past one!_ Jumps from the bed,
feeling the cold hand of fear on her heart. Runs downstairs and stares
helplessly out of the front door. Pauses to consider a thousand possible
eventualities. Returns to bedroom and completely re-robes, not forgetting
to do her hair neatly and powder her nose. Puts on cloak and goes out.
Cartwrights’ house all in darkness. Bangs on the front door and rings
bell. Head of old Mr. Cartwright at first-floor window:
“Who the devil’s that?”
“It’s me. Where’s Tom?”
“Tom! Haven’t seen him for weeks!”
“Good God! Let me in.”
Cartwright family aroused. Panic. Fainting scene in drawing-room. Brandy,
smelling-salts and eau-de-cologne. Young George Cartwright mounts his
bicycle—rides to the police-station; on the way talks to policeman on
point duty. No, no one heard anything of a thin man with a snuff-colored
mustache. At police-station, no accidents so far reported. Chief
inspector will make a note and await developments. Night passes, and the
following day. No news.
Weeks, months, years elapse. Eight years slide easily by. The wife
survives her grief. She marries the local organist, a blond and
commendable young man. They continue to live in the wife’s house.
Children gather round her knee. One, two, three, twins, an interval, six,
seven handsome blond children. They grow up.
Twenty-two years elapse. They are sitting at tea. The father, the mother
and the oldest son, a handsome young man in a gray flannel suit. He
kisses his mother and says:
“I must go now, mother dear. I have to take a Bible-class.”
He goes out (presumably to the Bible-class). The mother smiles with
pride, the father glows with benignity and helps himself to another
buttered muffin. Everything perfect. Suddenly the door opens, and an old
man in a long gray beard and perambulating manner wanders into the room.
He stares at the wife, and mumbles:
“Did you say Thursday or Friday?... My memory is not what it was....”
And the wife stares at the old man, and then at the blond organist. And
the blond organist stares at the mother of his beautiful children, and
then at the bearded interloper. And they all stare at each other and feel
very embarrassed.
* * * * *
The story is familiar to you? Well, perhaps so. It is the story of the
eternal triangle, the most useful pattern of geometrical forms in the
construction of a romantic pattern.
Heigho! the trouble with human triangles is that they are never
equilateral. Two sides together are invariably greater than the third
side.
Jim Canning was the third side of a triangle, and he got flattened out.
In fact, his wife used to flatten him out on every possible occasion.
She was bigger than he, and she was aided by the _tertium quid_, Ted
Woollams, who was nothing more or less than a professional pugilist. What
was Jim to do? In every well-conducted epic the hero performs physical
feats which leave you breathless. He is always tall and strong, and a bit
too quick with the rapier for any villain who crosses his path. But what
about a hero who is small and elderly, of poor physique, short-sighted,
asthmatical, with corns which impede his gait? You may say that he has
no place in the heroic arena. He should clear out, go and get on with
his job, and leave heroism to people who know how to manage the stuff.
And yet there was something heroic in the heart of Jim Canning: a quick
sympathy, and an instinct for self-sacrifice.
He used to keep a second-hand furniture shop, which, you must understand,
is a very different thing from an antique shop. Jim’s furniture had no
determinate character such as that which is associated with the name of
Chippendale, Sheraton or Heppelwhite. It was just “furniture.” Well-worn
sofas, broken chairs and tables, mattresses with the stuffing exuding
from holes, rusty brass beds with the knobs missing, broken pots and
mirrors and dumb-bells; even clothes, and screws, false teeth and
bird-cages, and ancient umbrellas. But his specialty was old iron. Trays
and trays and baskets filled with scraps of old iron.
His establishment used to be known in Camden Town at that time as “The
Muck Shop.” At odd times of the day you might observe his small pathetic
figure trundling a barrow laden with the spoils of some hard-pressed
inhabitant. What a tale the little shop seemed to tell! Struggle and
poverty, homes broken up, drink, ugly passions, desperate sacrifices—a
battered array of the symbols of distress. And, somehow, in his person
these stories seemed to be embodied. One felt that he was sorry for the
people whose property he bought. He was always known as a fair dealer. He
paid a fair price and never took advantage of ignorance.
His marriage was a failure from the very first. She was a big, strapping
woman, the daughter of a local greengrocer. Twelve years younger than
Jim, vain, frivolous, empty-headed and quarrelsome. Her reasons for
marrying him were obscure. Probably she had arrived at the time when she
wanted to marry, and Jim was regarded as a successful shop-keeper who
could keep her in luxury. He was blinded by her physical attractions, and
tried his utmost to believe that his wife was everything to be desired.
Disillusionment came within the first month of their married life, at the
moment, indeed, when Clara realized that her husband’s business was not
so thriving as she had been led to believe. She immediately accused him
of deceiving her. Then, she began to sulk and neglect him. She despised
his manner of conducting business—his conscientiousness and sense of
fair-dealing.
“If you’d put some ginger into it,” she once remarked, “and not always be
thinking about the feelings of the tripe you buy from, we might have a
house in the Camden Road and a couple of servants.”
This had never been Jim’s ambition. Many years ago he had attended a
sale at Shorwell Green, on the borders of Sussex, a glorious spot near
the downs, amidst lime-trees and little running streams. It had been the
dream of his life that one day he would retire there, with the woman he
loved—and her children. When he put the matter to Clara, she laughed him
to scorn.
“Not half!” she said. “Catch me living among butterflies and blinking
cows. The Camden Road is my game.”
Jim sighed, and went on trundling his barrow. Well, there it was! If the
woman he had married desired it, he must do what she wanted. In any case
it was necessary to begin to save. But with Clara he found it exceedingly
difficult to begin to save. She idled her day away, bought trinkets,
neglected her domestic offices, went to the pictures, and sucked sweets.
Any attempt to point out to her the folly of her ways only led to bitter
recriminations, tears and savage displays of temper, even physical
violence to her husband.
Then there came a day when Jim fondly believed that the conditions of
their married life would be ameliorated. A child was born, a girl, and
they called her Annie. Annie became the apple of his eye. He would hurry
back from the shop to attend at Annie’s bath. He would creep in at night
and kiss the warm skin of her little skull. He would think of her as he
pottered around amidst his broken chairs and tables, and utter little
croons of anticipatory pleasure. Annie! She would grow up and be the
mainstay of his life. He would work and struggle for her. Her life should
be a path of roses and happiness. His wife, too, appeared to improve upon
the advent of Annie. For a time the baby absorbed her. She displayed a
kind of wild animal joy in its existence. She nursed it and fondled it,
and did not seem to resent the curtailment of her pleasures. It was an
additional mouth to feed; nevertheless their expenses did not seem to
greatly increase, owing probably to Clara’s modified way of living.
Four years of comparative happiness followed. Jim began to save. Oh! very
slowly; very, very slowly. He still had less than three hundred pounds
put on one side for—that vague future of settled security. But still it
was a solid beginning. In another ten or fifteen years he would still
be—well, not quite an old man; an active man, he hoped. If he could save
only one hundred pounds a year!
It was at this point that Ted Woollams appeared on the scene. He was
the son of a manager of a Swimming Bath. On Sundays he used to box
in “Fairyland” for purses of various amounts—he was a redoubtable
middle-weight. During the week he swaggered about Camden Town in new
check suits, his fingers glittering with rings. He met Clara one
evening at a public dance. The mutual attraction appears to have been
instantaneous. They danced together the whole evening, and he saw her
home.
And then began the squeezing out of the third side of the triangle. Jim
was not strong enough for them. At first he professed to see nothing in
the friendship. He described Ted as “a jolly young fellow, a great pal
of my wife’s.” And Ted treated him with a certain amount of respect. He
called in at odd times, stayed to meals, drank Jim’s beer, and smoked
Jim’s tobacco. The triangle was quite intact. It was Annie who caused
the first disruption. She disliked the prize-fighter, and screamed at
the sight of him. This led to reprisals when he had gone, and Jim’s
championship of the child did not help to cement the always doubtful
nature of the affection between husband and wife. There were cross words
and tears, and once she pushed him over a chair, and, in the fall, cut
his temple.
A few days later, Ted Woollams called in a great state of agitation. He
wished to see Jim alone. It appeared that a wonderful opportunity had
occurred to him. It was a complicated story about a quantity of bonded
brandy which he had a chance of acquiring and selling at an enormous
profit. He wanted to borrow fifty pounds till Saturday week, when he
would pay Jim back sixty. Jim said he would lend him the fifty, but he
didn’t want any interest.
When Saturday week came, Ted said the deal had fallen through, but he
would let him have the money back the following Saturday. In the meantime
he came to supper nearly every night. Sometimes he drank too much beer.
Then Clara began to dress for the part. She bought expensive frocks, and
had the account sent in to Jim. She neglected the child.
The months drifted by, and Ted was always going to pay, but he became
more and more part and parcel of the household. Jim’s savings began to
dwindle. He protested to both his wife and Ted, but they treated him
with indifference. The boxer began to abuse his familiarity. He would
frequently tell Jim that he was not wanted in the drawing-room after
supper. When spoken to about the money he laughed and said:
“Oh, you’ve got plenty, old ’un. Lend us another fiver.”
On one occasion Jim was foolish enough to lend him another ten pounds,
under the spell of some heartrending story about a poor woman in the
street where Woollams lived. This lopsided triangle held together for
nearly four years. Jim was unhappy and distracted. He did not know how to
act. He could not leave his wife, for the sake of the child. If he turned
her out—and he had no legal power to do so—she would probably take Annie
with her. And the child was devoted to him. They were great friends, and
it was only this friendship which prevented him indulging in some mad
act. Several times he ordered Woollams out of the house and forbade him
to come again, but the boxer laughed at him and called him an old fool.
He knew that his wife was practically keeping the man. They went to
cinemas together, and often disappeared for the whole day, but she always
returned at night, although it was sometimes two or three in the morning
before she did so. Jim had no proof of actual unfaithfulness. Neither
could he afford to hire detectives, a course of action which in any case
appeared to him distasteful. Far from saving a hundred pounds a year, he
was spending more than his income. His savings had dwindled to barely
forty pounds. His business was stagnant, but still he trundled his barrow
hither and thither, calling out, “Old iron! old iron!” and he struggled
to pay the fair price.
During a great period of his life Jim had enjoyed an unaccountable but
staunch friendship with a gentleman named Isaac Rubens. Isaac Rubens was
a Jew in a slightly similar way of business to himself, and he conducted
a thriving house at the corner of the Holy Angel Road. Isaac was in many
respects a very remarkable man. Large, florid, and puffy, with keen
eagle eyes and an enormous nose, he was a man of profound knowledge of
the history and value of _objets d’art_. He was moreover a man of his
word. He was never known to give or accept a written contract, and never
known to break a verbal one. The friendship between these two was in
many respects singular. Isaac was a keen man of business, and Jim was
of very little use to him. Isaac’s furniture was the real thing, with
names and pedigrees. He did not deal in old iron but in stones and jewels
and ornaments. Nevertheless he seemed to find in Jim’s society a certain
pleasure. Jim would call on his rounds and, leaving his barrow out in the
road, would spend half-an-hour or so chatting with the Jew across the
counter.
Sometimes after supper they would call on each other and smoke a pipe and
discuss the vagaries of their calling, or the more abstract problems of
life and death.
When this trouble came upon Jim he immediately repaired to his friend’s
house and told him the whole story.
“Oh, dear! oh, dear! This is a bad business! a bad business!” exclaimed
Isaac, when it was over. His moist eyes glowed amidst the general
humidity of his face. “How can I advise you? An erring wife is the
curse of God. You cannot turn her away without knowledge. Thank God, my
Lena.... But there! among my people such lapses are rare. You have no
evidence of unfaithfulness?”
“No.”
“You must be gentle with her, gentle but firm. Point out the error of her
ways.”
“I am always doing that, Isaac.”
“She may get over it—a passing infatuation. Such things happen.”
“If it wasn’t for the child!”
“Yes, yes, I understand. Oh, dear! oh, dear! very distressing, my friend.
If I can be of any assistance—”
He thrust out his large hands helplessly. It is the kind of trouble in
which no man can help another, and each knew it. Jim hovered by the door.
“It’s nice to have some one to—talk to, anyway,” he muttered; then he
picked up his cap and shuffled away, calling out:
“Old iron! Old iron!”
Annie was nine when the climax came. An intelligent, pretty child, with
dark hair and quick, impulsive manners. Her passionate preference for her
father did not tend to smooth the troubles of the household. She attended
the grammar-school and had many girl-friends. She saw very little of her
mother.
One evening Jim returned home late. He had been on a visit to his friend,
Isaac. He found Annie seated on the bottom stair, in her nightdress. Her
face was very pale and set, her eyes bright. She had been crying. When
she saw her father she gasped:
“Daddy!... Oh, Daddy!”
He seized her in his arms and whispered:
“What is it, my dear?”
Then she cried quietly while he held her. He did not attempt to hurry
her. At last she got her voice under control and gasped quietly:
“I had gone to bed. I don’t know why it was. I got restless in bed. I
came down again softly. I peeped into the sitting-room.... Oh, Daddy!”
“What? What, my love?”
“That man.... That man and—”
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“He was—”
“He was kissing her and—Oh!”
Jim clutched his child and pressed her head against his breast.
“I went in.... He _struck_ me.”
“What!”
“He struck me because I wouldn’t promise not to tell.”
“He struck you, eh? He struck you! That man struck you, eh?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Where is he?”
“They’re—up there now. I’m frightened.”
“Go to bed, my love. Go to bed.”
He carried her up the stairs and fondled her, and put her into bed.
“It’s all right, my love. Go to sleep. Pleasant dreams. It’s all right.
Daddy will look after you.”
Then he went downstairs.
A shout of laughter greeted him through the door of the sitting-room.
He gripped the handle and walked deliberately in. Ted Woollams was
stretching himself luxuriously on the sofa. His heavy sensual face
appeared puffy and a little mussed. Clara was lying back in an easy
chair, smoking a cigarette. Jim did not speak. He walked up to Ted and
without any preliminary explanation struck him full on the nose with
his clenched fist. For a moment the boxer appeared more surprised than
anything. His eyes narrowed, then the pain of the blow appeared to sting
him. He rose from the sofa with a growl. As he advanced upon Jim, the
latter thought:
“He’s going to kill me. What a fool I was not to strike him with a poker!”
He thrust out his arms in an ineffectual defense. There was something
horribly ugly, ugly and revolting in the animal-like lurch of the man
bearing down on him ... the demon of an inevitable doom. Jim struck
wildly at the other’s arms, at the same time thinking:
“My little girl! I promised to look after her.”
A jarring blow above the heart staggered him, and as he began to crumple
forward he had a quick vision of the more destroying fate, the something
which came crashing to his jaw. He heard his wife scream; then darkness
enveloped him.
A long and very confused period followed. His glimpses of consciousness
were intermittent and accompanied by pain. He heard people talking, and
they appeared strangers to him. There was a lot of talking going on,
quarreling, perhaps. When he was once more a complete master of his brain
he realized abruptly that he was in the ward of a hospital. His jaw was
strapped up tight and was giving him great pain; a nurse was feeding
him through a silver tube. Two of his teeth were missing. He wanted to
talk to her, but found he could not speak. Then he recalled the incident
of his calamity. Well, there it was. He had been brought up in a hard
school. Old iron! The instinct of self-preservation prompted him to bide
his time. Doubtless his jaw was broken; a long job, but he would get well
again. At the end of the journey Annie awaited him. What was the child
doing now? Who was looking after her? He passed through periods of mental
anguish and misgiving, and then long periods of drowsy immobility. Night
succeeded day. To his surprise, on the following afternoon, his wife
appeared. She came and sat by the bed, and said:
“Going on all right?”
He nodded. She looked uneasily round, then whispered:
“You needn’t have taken on like that. Ted’s going off to America,
to-morrow—fulfilling engagements.”
Jim stared at the ceiling, then closed his eyes. Ted no longer interested
him. He wanted Annie, and he could not ask for her. Clara stayed a few
moments, chatted with the nurse, and vanished. Why had she come? Later
on, he was removed to the operating theater, and they re-set his jaw. The
shift of time again became uncertain. A long while later he remembered a
kindly-faced man in a white overall saying:
“Well, old chap, who struck you this blow?”
He bent his ear down to Jim’s lips, and the latter managed to reply:
“A stranger.”
Isaac came, humid and concerned, and pressed his hand.
“Well, well, I’ve found you, old friend! A neighbor told me. Distressing
indeed. They say you must not talk. Well, what can I do?”
Jim indicated with his hands that he wished to write something down.
Isaac produced an envelope and a pencil, and he wrote:
“Go and see my little gal Annie. Send her to me. Keep an eye on her.”
Isaac nodded gravely, and went away.
There appeared an eternity of time before the child came, but when she
did all his dark forebodings vanished. She came smiling up the ward, and
kissed him. They held each other’s hands for a long time before she spoke.
“They would not tell me where you were. It was old Mr. Rubens. Oh, Daddy,
are you getting better?”
Yes, he was getting better. Much better. During the last two minutes
he had improved enormously. He felt that he could speak. He managed to
mumble:
“How are you, my love?”
“All right. Mother has been very cross. That horrid man has gone away.
Mr. Rubens said you hurt your face. How did it happen, Daddy?”
“I slipped on the stairs, my dear, and fell.”
Annie’s eyes opened very wide, but she did not speak. He knew by her
manner that she did not believe him. At the back of her eyes there still
lurked something of that horror which haunted them on the night when she
had discovered “that horrid man” embracing her mother. It was the same
night that her father “slipped on the stairs.” The child was too astute
to dissociate the two incidents, but she did not want to distress him.
“I shall come every day,” she announced.
He smiled gratefully, and she stayed and chatted with him until the
sister proclaimed that visitors were to depart.