_Wherein Master Oliver entertains Guests_
When Caroline Baddlesmere returned to the great bare room, and took off
her outdoor wraps, Noll was seemingly drowsing, Netherby Gomme sitting
on the bed by his side.
The boy had been lying very still for awhile when he touched Netherby’s
sleeve, signing to him to put down the ear of confidence:
“Netherby,” he whispered, “when it’s within a quarter of midnight, old
Modeyne will be fumbling at the door-latch down below.... I shan’t be
able to help Betty to bring him up to-night--so you might slip down on
tip-toe and just keep a flight of steps above her all the way. In case
she needs help you can pretend you are just going home.”
He took hold of Gomme’s coat-lapel:
“Don’t let her know you are on the look-out unless old Modeyne is very
far gone--he’s a goodish weight to push along.”
Netherby nodded.
A gleam shot into Noll’s eye; and he caught Gomme’s coat-lapel again:
“He comes up pretty quiet--he always takes his boots off _for fear of
waking the gossips_!” A twinkle glittered in his eyes: “The bother is
that once he begins undressing he takes off everything but his shirt,
and insists on going to sleep on the hall mat. Betty has got to keep
him moving--she knows exactly what to do.... Once he starts up the
stairs he is all right--unless he hiccups, and insists on apologizing
to the people whose doors he is passing.... You’ll know soon enough,
he nearly kicks their doors down. He looks killingly funny with his
braces hanging down behind and carrying his boots and things as he
goes crawling up the stairs, cracking his toes, and complaining that
_it is not seemly that rending Hiccup should climb the Whirling Stairs
of Ambition_. He sometimes lies down at the head of a flight of steps
and insists on going to sleep--he says that _we are the slaves of
convention, and an overplus of clips tends to an overtax of sleep_....
You’ve got to see that he doesn’t stop at the landlady’s door, or
he’ll kick it and chuckle in a loud whisper: _Behold where whispering
gossip lies!_ with the accent on the ‘lies.’ He’s a bit of a wag is old
Modeyne; but he won’t do anything low--he’s always a gentleman--even in
his night-shirt.” The lad’s face grew serious again. “Betty will be
waiting up for him--and she has no fire--and--I shall not be able to
help to-night.”
Netherby nodded.
There was a knock at the door; and the little lodging-house drudge
crept in, shut it after her, and set her back against it:
“Please, lidy,” she said with a loud sniff, “that lidy what walks like
a police-officer is a-straddlin’ on the mat outside.”
She jerked her thumb over her shoulder towards the door behind her:
“I’ve forgot her name,” she went on. “I’ve showed her up, because it’s
such a leg-aching grind a-goin’ down and up them stairs twice--but I’ll
show her down again if yer don’t want to be bothered with her--and
Master Oliver all of a heap too!... I did give her a hint as it was the
small-pox likely enough--and I can easy work up the idea----”
The gift was pushed forward by the door opening behind her, and Emma
Hartroff entered the room, her hands thrust in the side-pockets of her
long jacket.
She greeted Caroline breezily:
“Hullo, Mrs. Baddlesmere--how are you all?... I could hear every word
the little slavey said.... I thought I might come and worry Noll a
bit--may I?”
Caroline had risen, and came forward to greet her.
“Yes, Miss Hartroff--of course you may.”
“I’m so glad--I was so afraid they’d send me away.”
Caroline, as she shook hands, whispered to her:
“If he show signs of drowsiness, please let him go to sleep.”
Emma Hartroff bowed an answer, and strode over to Noll’s bed; she
nodded to the others, who made way for her, and taking her straddling
stand near him, she surveyed the boy:
“You _do_ look pretty sick, on my word, Noll,” said she; and added
pathetically: “I wish I could do something for you--I never know what
to do with kids; but----”
“I say, Emma,” said Noll--“you ain’t going to a children’s party, are
you?”
Emma Hartroff raised eyebrows of inquiry:
“N-no, Noll!”
He signed to her to sit down beside him.
“Then don’t play the snivelling mother,” said he--“it ain’t your size.
Come and flirt with _me_--you may hold my hand.”
Emma Hartroff laughed good-naturedly, and sitting down on the bed
beside the boy, she took his hand:
“Noll, you are very old,” she said--and she blew a breath: “Phooh! you
_are_ high up.”
“Yes,” he nodded--“it makes me quite giddy when I smoke a pipe.”
A knock at the door--and the little drudge skipped in and shut it
again. She strode down the room on tip-toe to Caroline:
“Please, lidy--here’s that rummy gent as speaks like them beautiful
play-actors. He’s waitin’ to see you very partic’lar.” She giggled.
“He’s such a funny gentleman! Excuse my laughin’, mum, but he is that
hodd and ridic’lous! When I opened the door he says, says he: ‘Hail,
lugubrious smudgy serving-wench!’ says he.” She uttered a sniff, and
cocked her head thoughtfully: “I expect he’s a poet or that sort of
party. Jimmy, what a rum tailor he has! But if you ask me, mum, he
knows how to spell hungry. I knows a man’s eyes when he’s short of his
victuals. I ought ter.” Sniff. “I do love the the-ayter. They talks so
beautiful--just as if words had meanin’ in them. Not a bit like real
people----”
“May I ask what the gentleman is doing, meanwhile?” asked Caroline
drily.
The girl leaned forward, and added confidentially behind the back of
her hand:
“He’s on the mat.”
She jerked her thumb at the door.
Caroline shifted uneasily in her chair:
“I wish you would call gentlemen by their names, Victoria May Alice,”
she said irritably. “Do you mean Mr. Eustace Lovegood?”
“That’s ’im,” said Victoria May Alice.
“Then show him in, you stupid child.”
The face of Victoria May Alice cleared. She strode theatrically to
the door, flung it open like a footman, and, suppressing a spluttered
guffaw, announced mock-heroically:
“Mr. Eustace Lovegood!”
Lovegood walked in tragically--halted before Victoria May Alice, and
put his hand on her head:
“Victoria May Alice,” said he, “you will never do for the Embassy.
You do not take the world seriously. When you announce genius you
must shout it fearlessly, as though you had thrust a benefit upon the
world--not as though you were hurriedly hiding away undarned stockings
in a coffee canister.”
Victoria May Alice muffled a snigger in her hands and skipped from the
room.
Lovegood turned to his hostess:
“Ah, Caroline!” He advanced down the room slowly: “Your devoted
slave--Noll’s devoted slave! Ha! Mr. Gomme, your servant! Miss Julia! I
am your footstool.”
Caroline rose to meet him. She smiled:
“You wished to see me, Eustace!” she asked.
He nodded:
“I came to see if Noll were well,” he said.
She made as though she would lead him to the boy’s bedside:
“It will do Noll good just to see you,” she said.
The big man held her hand:
“Ah, my dear Caroline--I come for my own pleasure, not for his. Noll
being ill, the town seems unholy quiet. History is an empty tragedy
without its historian--an epic less than doggerel without its poet. And
the town, being bereft of Noll, has ceased to be moved with incident.
The world is become a dead-house. What an eye a boy has for calamities!
He scents an event in the air. He arrives before the accident. A boy is
always thrilled at the sight of a powder-cask----”
“I wish, Eustace, you were not always throwing lighted matches so near
the cask.”
The great fellow laughed jovially, and kissing her hand, he strode over
to the bed where Noll lay, his eyes upon him. The greetings were very
cordial. There had always been the alliance of understanding between
them.
“Noll,” said Lovegood, sitting down on the bed at his feet--“dear boy,
I am not well versed in the teething of infants, the lacy mysteries of
long-clothes, the cooing garrulities of the cradle, but--I _was_ once a
_boy_.... I remember the emotional moments of boyhood.... I have never
forgotten my first pork-pie.... I would fain have brought you a rare
roast goose, Oliver; but I had to decide on the homely chicken broth.”
He turned and called:
“What ho, without!”
“A-coming!” cried, from without, the shrill voice of Victoria May Alice.
The door was flung open, and there entered Victoria, carrying a smoking
bowl.
“Victoria May Alice,” said Lovegood--“bear the goblet to the king.”
Victoria May Alice bore the goblet.
She handed the bowl to Noll--spluttered into a guffaw behind a grimy
hand--and hurried from the room.
The big man, sitting at the foot of the bed, smiled.
“God bless you, Oliver,” said he--“and get well.”
Noll began to sup the fragrant broth with a spoon.
Lovegood got up from the bed--coughed--blew his nose.
Caroline caught his eye, and signed to him. He strode down the room to
her.
“Eustace,” she said, “I wish you would not spend your money on the boy.
You have no right to stint yourself--but--my dear fellow, you touch my
heart--and--I cannot scold you.”
He stroked her shoulder:
“Tut, tut! nonsense!” said he, “we must not grow sentimental before
we are forty----” He was interrupted by the click of the door, and,
looking round, found Victoria May Alice at his elbow. She said to
Caroline:
“My heye, mum, we is a-makin’ of a night of it!”
Lovegood laughed and strode back to his seat on Noll’s bed.
Caroline turned impatiently to the girl:
“Yes, yes, Victoria--what is it?”
Victoria May Alice sniffed:
“It ain’t _it_, mum--it’s _them_,” she said--“two of them comic
gentlemen,” she tittered, and pulled herself up behind a grimy
hand--“as is always a-hangin’ about with the party from the the-ayter.”
She jerked a thumb at Lovegood. “They’re on the ’all doorstep and
says is Master Noll at ’ome to partic’lar friends--and I says I’ll go
and see; but if they was a-comin’ into this blessed house they’ve got
to put out them dirty pipes. It’s not nice of them a-callin’ on the
gentry a-smokin’ that muck. I don’t like it. These here London people
has no manners. They wouldn’t do it if they was callin’ on a duchess
or a bandy-legged bishop, or people as keep a butler. But--they are so
ridic’lous! Specially that--te-hee!--fluffy gentleman. Blime me--if I
don’t go on to the the-ayter myself when I’m grown up. I calls that
Life----”
She stopped at the clatter of feet on the attic stairs:
“O lor!” she said resignedly--“here they comes, bless ’em!”
Caroline put out her hand and touched the girl’s arm:
“Victoria, my dear child, don’t be so noisy, please.”
“Beg pardon, lidy,” the child replied humbly, and with sepulchral
hoarseness.
There was a loud knock, and before there was time to answer it, Rippley
and Robbins boisterously entered the room.
Noll’s greetings were too boyish for whispered talk as they all found
seats.
Victoria May Alice winked at Fluffy Reubens.
“_He_ ain’t dead yet!” said she.
Caroline had scarcely returned to her work, when Victoria May Alice
stepped stealthily to her side:
“Mr. Fosse called just before these gentlemen, mum,” said she. “The
silly hass wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I says, ‘Well, it’s
scarlet fever if you will have it between yer bleery bicycle lamps,’
says I.” She put her lean little arms akimbo: “He’s so blimey pushing.”
She put her hand up to her mouth and added confidentially: “I can’t
abide Fosse myself----”
A distant yell from below called: “Victoria-May-Yallis!”
“Hullo!” said the girl, “there’s ’er voice a-yellin’ again.”
She stole away softly.