I should, perhaps, have given more attention to the case of Miss
Muriel, but for the demands upon my time made by the business: it
appeared that many of my Woolwich customers were well satisfied
with their dealings with me, and they handed my cards around, with
the result that the shop was rarely free of callers, and sometimes
Millwood, and Peter, and myself would be all engaged in answering
questions, quoting figures. Once the visitors had made up their minds
that they wanted a certain article--a cheval glass, a sideboard, a card
table, or anything else--there was little haggling about price: from a
well-filled purse they produced one pound notes and ten shilling notes,
and settled the account; their chief difficulty came in an urgent and
feverish desire to get the articles of furniture home with the least
possible delay. I once saw two women, customers of mine, who had bought
a music stool, and a settee, and a brass fender with fire-irons,
endeavouring to board a tram-car with the burden of these possessions.
They told the conductor, after argument, that he would undoubtedly come
to a bad end.
Apart from the business, I had some anxiety caused by a letter from the
Quartermaster-Sergeant. Written, as usual, in pencil, and mentioning,
as always, that he was in the pink, it said that he hoped to be coming
home on leave soon; his first call would be given to his parents, and
he then proposed to look in at Gloucester Place and thank me for the
journals sent to him each week. I wished the man further. I felt sorry
I had ever hit upon the idea of posting the illustrated newspaper, or
of writing. I had some thought to going away to escape him, but one
did not know where to go. The postscript to the letter offered some
hope: it said that leave was a doubtful thing in these days, and I was
not to be disappointed if it happened that he could not get away. And I
was beginning to think I had worried myself over nothing at all, when
a telegram signed Cartwright came from Folkestone. I showed it to Miss
Katherine.
"But, my dear soul," she protested, "you're trembling. In your own
words, you're all of a fluster."
"The mistake I made was in not telling him my age at the outset."
"That would have been an eccentric course to pursue. It is one that I,
myself, rarely adopt in these situations."
"You're young, Miss Katherine, and it doesn't matter what they imagine
your age to be. I'm getting on towards the forties, and it matters a
good deal to me. I've always tried to write to this blessed man in a
cheerful style, and if he has got the idea that I'm twenty-two, and
look less, one can't blame him."
"There are beauty specialists in Bond Street."
"And there are foolish women who patronise them."
"If he comes along," said Miss Katherine, "when I am home from the
bank, I could--pardon the conceit in the suggestion, for which I am
sure Heaven will forgive me--I could pretend to be you, Weston."
"That wouldn't do at all," I declared promptly. "I want to see him.
Want to find out what he is like."
"The next best idea that occurs to my inventive brain," she remarked,
"is that I should take you in hand to-morrow morning before I leave,
and by all the dodges known to my toilet table, subtract a few years
from your appearance."
"No making up," I bargained.
"I will do nothing," she agreed, "to bring the artificial blush to your
cheek, dear woman. The game we are going to play is, believe me, not
rouge et noir."
Compliments have sometimes been offered to me on the length and the
colour of my hair, but they mostly came from maids at Chislehurst who
wanted the afternoon off to go and meet their sweethearts; for the
rest, people troubled very little about my looks, and I suppose I had
not paid an extravagant amount of attention to them. Certainly Miss
Katherine, when she assumed management and command, did effect some
notable improvements. She persuaded me not to look in the mirror whilst
the task was in progress, and when I was allowed to take a glance, I
gasped with astonishment, beamed with satisfaction.
"That's it!" cried Miss Katherine. "That's exactly the right kind of
smile we want. Ah," regretfully, "it's slipping. And now it's gone!"
She imitated the tricks of the photographer when he is taking portraits
of defensive babies; I assured her the ability to grin was not in my
line. "Practise, Weston dear," she counselled. "Remember that with hair
like yours you need never say dye."
Miss Muriel offered no remark upon the alteration, but Mrs. Hillier
gave compliments, and declared she was reminded of the time when we
first met; she advised me not to mar the effect by wearing one of the
hats I usually pinned on before leaving the house. Noticing that I
wavered, she insisted on accompanying me to a milliner's establishment
near the Chatham and Dover station. When, later, I entered the shop
in London Street, Millwood came forward, without first putting on his
spectacles, and not recognising me, said:
"Well, lady, and what can we do for you this morning?"
Subsequently, he delivered a lecture on the impossibility of regarding
women-folk as anything like sensible beings so long as they devoted
nearly all their time, and the whole of their thoughts, to fashion.
"You don't find me spending money, and going to shops, and fussing
about, just in order to make myself better looking than I really am." I
answered that, more than once, I had been tempted to call his attention
to the fact.
Quartermaster-Sergeant Cartwright dashed in soon after mid-day. He had
called, it seemed, at Gloucester Place, and had been sent on to London
Street.
"A flying visit," he announced to Peter. I was in the back room,
looking once more at my reflection in the mirror. "Tell the lady to
hurry up. Only five days leave, and a thousand and one urgent matters
to see to. Mention that I'm pressed for time, will you."
He was tall, broad, and middle-aged; very smartly set up, and with,
apart from his quick deportment, the air of a man accustomed to give
orders, and expecting them to be obeyed. This I gained from the first
sight of him over the curtained glass of the door.
"Miss--Miss Weston, I believe," he stammered.
"Quartermaster-Sergeant Cartwright, I think." We shook hands.
"You'll excuse me," he said, confusedly. "I'm rather taken aback. I
had the notion--forgive me for saying so--that you were somewhat older
than--. What I mean to say is--"
"I am old enough," I said, "not to tell you how old I am. This is my
brother-in-law, Mr. Millwood. This is my assistant, Peter. What do you
think of the shop?"
"Fine," he declared, with enthusiasm. "A1. Top hole. First class.
Anyone can see, with half an eye, that you've got good taste. You know
what to select, you do."
"I may point out," chuckled Millwood, "in regard to Mary Weston that
no one has yet taken the trouble to select her." He looked around for
approval of this remark. Nobody laughed.
"Oversights will happen in this world," said the visitor. "We find them
even out in France."
"In my view," contended Millwood, "this war isn't being conducted in
the manner that it ought to be carried on. Blunders have been made
which seem to me most 'ighly reprehensible. Mistakes occur which ought
to have been foreseen."
"I can tell you the reason," said the Quartermaster-Sergeant. "The
reason is a very simple one. It's mainly because you are not out there.
And now," to me, briskly, "what about lunch? Can you spare half an hour
to come and have something to eat with me?"
"I can spare an hour and a half," I answered, "to take you along to the
Ship, and get you to take a meal with me."
"But my motive for calling on you was to repay you in some measure
for--"
"You're wasting your breath," interposed Millwood. "I've knowed her
longer than what you have, and I can tell you, in strict confidence,
that when Mary Weston has made up her mind, dynamite by the ton won't
move her."
We walked towards the riverside, and the Quartermaster-Sergeant
congratulated me on the fact that I was one of the few women he had
met who could keep in step with him; he called my attention in Nelson
Street to the difficulty encountered by tall soldiers who walked with
short girls, and never succeeded in coming to an agreement concerning
gait. Cartwright was a shade taller than myself, but I noticed, by the
reflection in shop windows that my new hat made us appear to be of
almost equal stature; two women, near the entrance to the market, gazed
at us and said in duet, "Them's a fine-made couple, and no mistake."
It is not for me to dictate or advise other members of my sex who may
find themselves in like circumstances, but I do feel sure, in looking
back, that I did the wise thing in providing Cartwright with a good
meal, and one served up in environments calculated to impress him. He
had some doubts whether a N.C.O. would be allowed to enter the dining
room; I interrogated the head waiter who said, re-assuringly, that,
bless his heart, all the old nonsense had long since been dismissed; he
pointed out a couple of brothers seated at a corner table, one a Staff
Officer and the other a Private in the H.A.C. So I piloted Cartwright
to chairs near the window where we faced each other, and could gain a
view of the river with its bend towards Woolwich, and there gave orders
in a manner intended to show composure, and no doubt exaggerated into
sharp authority.
"I can see with half an eye," said Cartwright, admiringly when he had
placed his cap on a hat peg, "that you're well used to this sort of
thing. I'm not. I'm new to it. And if I make any blunders, you must
just give me a quiet reminder to think of what I am doing."
"Providing you don't think of what you're doing," I declared, "you
won't find the leastest trouble. For my part, I wish I knew what to
call you. I can't say 'Mister' to a soldier, and Quartermaster-Sergeant
seems such a mouthful."
"What about calling me 'George?'"
He discovered, half-way through the meal, that our first names were
those of the King and the Queen, and we pretended that we lived at
Buckingham Palace, and talked of giving a few days to Sandringham. The
boy waiter, attending upon us, dropped a plate to the floor on hearing
us speak of our eldest son, the Prince, and the fine work he was doing
out in France; he later induced some of his colleagues, relieved from
distant tables, to come and listen, whereupon we spoke of ordinary
matters, such as increase in the price of vegetables, and reductions in
the motor omnibus service, and an Aunt Maria at Stepney; our juvenile
waiter was told by his elders that over clever kids who tried to play
practical jokes invariably obtained, sooner or later, the reward of a
thick ear.
"'Pon my word, though," declared Cartwright, "this is an experience
for me. First in regard--if you don't mind me saying so--to a lady's
society, and whilst I am on that topic, I may as well admit that I feel
as though I had known you all my life."
"I feel that I wish I had known you all my life."
"Very nicely phrased," he said, approvingly. "Second, in regard to
taking plenty of time over a meal, and having it served up politely
instead of being flung at you. People can say what they like,"
contended the Quartermaster-Sergeant, earnestly, "but comfort isn't a
thing to be despised. Out there, all these months, I've dreamt over and
over again, in my waking hours, of a nice little house, Forest Hill
way, and a nice little garden with scarlet runners growing near the
nice little wooden palings, and a nice little wife--"
"Your ambitions appear to be on a small scale."
"Don't misunderstand me," he begged. "I don't mean she's got to be
a dwarf. My idea has always been someone about your own height." He
helped himself, with some confusion to enough mustard to serve a
regiment. "Tell me if I'm talking too much," he begged. "I get so much
into the habit of laying down the law that I'm inclined to forget
myself."
"That doesn't matter," I remarked, "so long as you don't forget me."
I declare I said this only for the sake of keeping the conversation
going: he put his large hand across the table impetuously, and gripped
mine.
"Don't you ever keep awake at nights," he said, "worrying about that.
I shall recollect this day that we're having together when everything
else has vanished from my memory."
I think we both recognised that we were travelling faster than the
rules permit; for the remainder of the lunch we were more guarded
in speech. He talked about his father and mother, and I made some
allusions to the Hillier family. It seemed he had the notion that I was
a friend and an equal: he assured me Master John had once spoken of me
in a way to support this, and one could not help feeling it was good
of the lad to convey the impression. George Cartwright had a cigar,
recommended by the head waiter as of a brand smoked by all the nobs,
and I followed the head waiter out of the room, and settled the bill.
The head waiter said, with great heartiness, "Thank you, miss; thank
you very much indeed. Wish there was more like you!"
I expected--or feared--that George Cartwright would want to hurry off.
Mentioning that his latest recollection of Greenwich Park was connected
with a Sunday School treat--
"Lord!" he said, setting his cap at the mirror, "but I've learnt a bit
since those days. And most of it wasn't worth the learning!"
He suggested that the afternoon was fine enough to excuse a stroll up
the hill to the Observatory. We walked first along the narrow pavement
near the river, came to the old Trafalgar Hotel, now an Aged Merchant
Seamen's Institution, and Cartwright, by request, gave to the old chaps
standing outside, the latest news of the war. Then we strolled towards
the Park.
I may as well admit that I had never before enjoyed a stroll so much.
It seems a foolish thing for a woman of my years to say, but for the
time the business in London Street mattered nothing, the Hilliers at
Gloucester Place mattered little. One of my customers met us near the
gates of the Park, and rushed at me with an inquiry concerning a Bible
box; I sent her off with a direction to call and see Millwood. At the
top of the hill, and near the edge where green chairs were placed,
we found the elderly couple of the ground floor in Gloucester Place;
they were seated there holding each other's hands, and gazing down
contentedly at children tumbling about on the slope.
"Miss Weston," said the old gentleman, rising, and saluting with a
sweep of his curly brimmed hat, "it needed only your presence to make
the afternoon entirely charming. Pray do me the honour to introduce me
to your military friend."
I had no reason to be ashamed of the Quartermaster-Sergeant. Some men,
in his position, and after a good lunch, might have felt inclined to
ridicule the Wintertons; they looked as though they had emerged from
past centuries or stepped from a mantelpiece, and, indeed, they ware
not exempted from comments and criticism of frivolous young people who
went by. But Cartwright listened to Captain Winterton's explanation
of the windings of the river, drawn on the gravel with the point of a
malacca cane, was deferential to the old lady when she spoke of the
highly cultivated society in which she had mixed during early years.
She was careful to make no errors in the various branches of any
genealogical tree.
"The Admiral," she said, in her precise and leisured way, "perhaps
neither of you knew; he was long before your time. But his eldest
daughter whom you may have met, she, as I need scarcely say, was a most
highly accomplished young woman, playing the harp divinely, and singing
'Juanita' in a manner that caused sensitive hearers to swoon away. She
married a Mr. Todhunter, a most humorous gentleman who used to make
really wonderful puns, and afterwards took to drink. She, as you are
doubtless aware, removed to New Cross, and gave music lessons. The
second daughter, whilst less gifted in music, had a passion for making
woolwork slippers that you seldom encounter nowadays. Everyone said
that she was going to marry a bachelor clergyman of the neighbourhood,
but she ran off with her father's coachman. It chanced that I heard
some of the Admiral's remarks upon this lamentable occurrence, but
not all, because my dear mother intervened and--You didn't have the
privilege of knowing my dear mother, Miss Weston, but it will be a
delight, some fine day, to shew you her tombstone."
"My love," said Captain Winterton, solicitously.
"My sweet."
"Think of your throat," he begged.
"I was about," remarked the old lady, "to turn up the collar of your
overcoat. We are not yet favoured with the balmy weather associated
with spring. The Quartermaster-Sergeant," she went on, beaming at
Cartwright, "will recall the lines of Mr. Browning that contain an
allusion to the present month."
Cartwright jerked his head knowingly, and remarked that poetry was very
stimulating if you were but careful not to take too much of it at a
time.
"My love!" said the Captain, with deference, "Do you think, in all the
circumstances--April afternoon, a highly intellectual audience, and
the surroundings of youth--that you could manage to recite your set of
verses?"
The old lady protested modestly. She had written them, it appeared, in
the early sixties, and she argued that fashions in poetry changed as
in everything else. We insisted, and she gave, with gesture and a rapt
expression, some lines about trees and bees, and birds and words, and
flowers and bowers; her husband listened eagerly with a hand at ear,
and occasionally prompting her when memory failed. Cartwright and I
ejaculated at the end, "Beautiful, beautiful!" and Captain Winterton
said we might be interested to know that these verses were composed not
many yards away, under an elm which had, most unfortunately, been blown
down in the gale of '81. But he could shew us a still more interesting
feature of the past in the shape of the oak that witnessed his proposal
to the lady whom he now had the honour to call his wife. We had to see
this, and as we left the elderly couple, we heard him say:
"My love, I never heard you give those lines with greater force and
expression."
And she remarked:
"My dear, I hope we didn't bore the young people."
I took pains to assure the Quartermaster-Sergeant, in walking along
the avenue, that the Wintertons were genuine in their admiration for
each other, and he declared that, of this, he had no doubt. He seemed
rather quiet, and I asked him what he was thinking of; he answered that
it would be many days ere he managed to send the Wintertons out of his
mind.
"What I mean to say is," he explained, "married all these long years,
and always in each other's company, and still on friendly terms! Why,
it's the greatest achievement that anyone can hope for." I remarked
that the two might be looked upon as exceptions. "Granted," he said,
taking my arm, "but why are they exceptions? There's no good reason why
they should be exceptions. If they can do it, anybody can do it, and a
happy old age ought to become the general rule."
"Perhaps hasty marriages are sometimes to blame."
"Ah!" releasing my arm. "Hadn't thought of that. I suppose it's pretty
safe to assume that they are usually a mistake. Glad you reminded me."
I furnished other reasons, and spoke of the case of Miss Muriel, of
my anxieties concerning the girl. It appeared to me that with her
mercenary views there was, for her, but small prospect of happiness;
the Quartermaster-Sergeant agreed, but pointed out that in this world,
and especially in stirring times like the present, you could never say
for certain what was going to happen. He urged that I should not worry
myself, overmuch, concerning other people. He said that whilst it was
undoubtedly a mistake to concentrate thoughts too much on Number One,
it was certainly possible to err in the opposite direction.
"Oh, but I'm a manager," I remarked. "That's my job in life."
"Doesn't follow that there isn't some one who could manage you."
"Explain yourself."
An interesting conversation might have taken place, but that a
heated lad came up at this moment, cricket bat in hand, and begging
Cartwright, as a man of years, and moreover possessing military
authority, to come across the heath, and arbitrate on a nice point that
had arisen. The Quartermaster-Sergeant complied at once. It seemed
that the youth, sneaking a run, as he described it, found himself some
yards from the stumps, and the ball coming to the gloved hands of the
wicket-keeper; he thereupon, with great presence of mind, flung his
bat, and this, it was agreed, reached the inside of the crease ere the
bails were knocked off. Cartwright's decision was that the action,
though ingenious, was not sufficient. In his view, the batsman and the
bat had to be reckoned as inseparable.
"I s'pose, sir," remarked one of the players, "you couldn't stay on and
umpire, could you? It'd mean a great saving of time."
"If I stay on," said the Quartermaster-Sergeant, loosening belt, and
taking off tunic, "I take a more prominent share in the game. What
about me playing for both sides?"
"Good old sort!" declared the youngsters.
"Mary," he begged, "fairest of thy sex, and more intelligent than most,
look after that military property I've thrown down on the grass."
I should have preferred that we had gone on with our talk, but I knew
enough about men to be aware that, with many, cricket comes ahead of
everything else. Cartwright enjoyed himself. The ground was not too
good, but he bowled well, and took wickets, and made catches, and
when the lads found that he did not propose to take his turn with the
bat, their admiration for him became frank and genuine. And I felt
interested for a time to watch the boyish side of his nature, but only
for a time, and I was not sorry when one of the keepers came along, and
pointed out the date was not sufficiently advanced to make the playing
of the game legal and permissible on open spaces. It looked as though
our walk and our conversation could now be resumed, but the keeper
had two sons out in Flanders and--well, people are very sarcastic at
times about the way women-folk chatter, but when you get men discussing
affairs, it is difficult to guess when they will stop, and not easy
to find a method of arresting the debate. I strolled off, found the
boys, and persuaded them to set up their wickets once more. Returning,
I pointed out to the keeper that his authority was being derided. He
hurried away.
"Thought you were never going to finish your cackle," I remarked to the
Quartermaster-Sergeant. "What time do you want to be starting for home?"
"Tired of my company already?"
"Of course not. Only that there are your parents to be considered."
"For one day at least," he announced, "I'm going to consider myself.
And you. We're going to a theatre together. A theatre up in town."
He went on first to choose a play, and arrange about seats; I called
at London Street, where Millwood grumbled at my long absence, and
mentioned that he had never before seen me with such a colour. "Makes
you look like I don't know what!" he declared. "And mind you don't go
getting yourself talked about, Mary Weston. Greenwich is a rare place
for gossip."
As though I cared! As though any woman would have cared, with the
prospect of going to a theatre, and sitting next to a soldier man, home
on leave, after doing fine work for his country, and soon going out to
do more!
I could tell you everything about the play, and could give you all
the particulars of the dresses (I did furnish these details the next
day, first to Peter at the shop, and afterwards to Miss Katherine at
Gloucester Place). The incident worth recording here is that when my
Quartermaster-Sergeant Cartwright saw me off at Charing Cross station
that night by the eleven-thirty train, we shook hands through the open
window of the railway carriage, and he promised to see me again before
he went out. And, without saying "By your leave!" or "Hope you don't
object!" or any remark of the kind, he, as the train moved out, kissed
me.