Mr., or, as he loved to be designated, Captain Jenkyns, had once
followed the sea. But that was a long time ago. The serious part of his
life had been spent on a Thames steamer. The outer man was nautical,
and the carnal inner, as an inveterate craving for fiery drink clearly
proved; but many years of fresh water seemed to have washed the true
sailor’s kindly salt out of his nature. He was a thick-set, grizzled old
man, with bibulous superannuation written on every wrinkle that mounted
to his little red-rimmed eyes, and in every filament of the network of
tiny red veins on his nose.
He was sitting in the leathern arm-chair, with his back to the parlour
window, drinking his tea out of a saucer. Goddard and Lizzie sat
decorously at the tea-table. It was a ceremonious occasion, as the
use of the parlour, the potted ham and seed-cake on the table, Captain
Jenkyns’s brass-buttoned coat, and the little blue ribbon round Lizzie’s
neck, with the bow tied kittenishly under her ear, all combined to
testify. Previously Goddard used to join the domestic circle in the
kitchen, but then he had never been to Birmingham nor opened a banking
account at the City Bank. That made all the difference.
So far, conversation had not been animated. Goddard had conducted
it practically alone, sketching his visit to Birmingham, which had
terminated to his complete satisfaction. An offer for the shop and
good-will was already under consideration. The solicitors had advanced
him a good round sum for present needs.
“To keep a shop warn’t good enough for yer, I suppose,” Captain Jenkyns
had remarked in his agreeable way.
“No,” Goddard had answered coldly--he did not love the captain. “It
wasn’t.”
And then he had proceeded with his story. But the talk languished.
Lizzie, never expansive in her father’s presence, was less so to-day
than usual. Goddard’s sudden accession to wealth--riches beyond
the dreams of Lizzie’s avarice--somewhat awed her, after the first
excitement had passed. His cleverness, his personality, all in fact that
differentiated him from Joe Forster the tobacconist and his class, had
always put him a little beyond her reach; but now that he was a rich
man as well, she felt frightened and abashed. She offered him bread
and butter timidly, and flushed scarlet when she awkwardly flooded his
tea-cup. Then crumbs of cake went the wrong way, and she retired to the
window to hide her discomfiture.
“And now you’re a hindependent gentleman,” said the old man after a
pause, setting down his saucer. “I suppose you won’t want to be thinking
of marrying my gell.”
Goddard sprang to his feet. He had his own reasons for feeling stung to
the quick.
“You have no right to say that,” he cried hotly. “What do you take me
for?”
The ex-captain made the motion of “Ease her!” with his hand, and
chuckled.
“Do you think I don’t know human natur’, when I’ve seed boat-loads of it
every day for sixty years?”
“Well, you don’t know my nature,” said Daniel. “Lizzie, come here. We’ll
soon settle that matter.”
Lizzie turned from the window and advanced towards him, flushing
uncomfortably.
“Damme! I don’t want you to marry her. I don’t care a tinker’s damn,”
said the old man with unreasonable heat, as Goddard met Lizzie and took
her by the hand. “I ain’t going down on my bended knees to ask you to
marry her.”
“Oh, father! don’t,” said Lizzie on the brink of tears.
“Never mind,” said Goddard. “_I_ want to marry you, and I’m going to
marry you. I’ll have the banns put up next Sunday.”
“Why don’t you have a special licence at once?” growled the Captain
sarcastically.
“Because I know my own business best,” said Goddard.
“Then I’m blarsted if you’ll have her at all!”
“Don’t make a scene, father,” Lizzie entreated. She tried to slip away,
but Goddard’s arm tightened and restrained her. He looked with disgust
on the ignoble old face that blinked in cantankerous dignity. Save on
the ground of pure ill-temper he could not understand his outburst.
Lizzie had often told him of the awful rows she had had with her father
about nothing at all. But Goddard was not the man to be bullied.
“Lizzie is over twenty-one, and I’m going to marry her whether you are
blasted or not, Captain Jenkyns. You can take that from me.”
“Then you’re a ------er fool than I took you for,” replied the Captain,
giving in beneath the young fellow’s strong gaze. “Marry in haste;
repent at leisure. You want to make a lady of her. She ain’t going to be
no lady. It’s only going to set her off her ’ead. Think she’s going
to recognise her poor old father when she lives in a fine ’ouse and
dressed in silks and satins? Not a bit of it. I know human natur’, I
tell yer. I brought her up to be an honest working man’s wife. That’s
what she’s fit for. So that she could give me a bit of dinner
on Sundays. Now you’re a going to take her away from her natural
surroundings, what she was born in, and make her neither flesh, nor
fowl, nor good red ’erring. Think I don’t know? And you, with your
’igh-falutin’ idea about being too good to keep a shop, you ought to
marry a duchess instead of a poor old sailor’s gell: that’s what you
ought to do.”
He produced a flat bottle of rum from his side pocket, filled his
half-emptied tea-cup with spirits, and drank the compound to console his
poor old sailor’s paternal heart.
Goddard, seeing that the storm was over, smiled at the mixture of
shrewdness and selfishness in the old man’s speech. Certain home-truths
made him wince a little; but the prospect of Captain Jenkyns not finding
a seat at his Sunday dinner-table did not present itself to him as in
any way pathetic.
“Well,” he said good-humouredly, “I am not going to marry a duchess, but
a girl as sweet as one. Isn’t that true, Liz? And so there’s an end to
the matter. I suppose I can count on you to give her away, Captain?”
“Yes, I’ll give her away. Jolly good riddance,” growled the old man.
A short while afterwards he rose, filled his clay pipe with cavendish,
which he ground fine between his hands, and excusing himself on
the score of business, left the two young people to themselves. His
destination, however, was a far-off river-side public, where he spent
the rest of the evening with his cronies, and informed them, in speech
that grew gradually more marked by thickness and profanity, of the
approaching splendour of his daughter’s fortunes.
“Cheer up, Lizzie,” said Goddard, as she began to clear away the
tea-things in silence. “We neither of us mind what he says.”
“He makes me so ashamed,” said Lizzie. “I didn’t know where to look.
He’s been at it ever since you’ve been away, saying as how you would
want to back out; and he made me quite miserable, he did.”
The baby-blue eyes filled with tears. Goddard consoled her as best he
could.
“There, there, don’t cry,” he said, patting her shoulder with his great
hand. “The banns will be put up next Sunday, as I said; and three weeks
won’t be long, you know; and then it will all be over, and we’ll start
fair. Leave those things alone for the present, and let us talk about
it.”
So they sat, side by side, over the fire, and spoke of the near future.
They would live in lodgings until they could find a house to suit them.
They discussed the size of the house, its position, the furniture, the
question of servants. They came nearer the present, and Goddard counted
out into her hand six crisp bank-notes wherewith to buy her trousseau.
Lizzie’s mind swam in ecstatic wonderment.
“All this--for me?” she whispered, awestricken.
“Yes, and as much more if you like. I am going to get a new rig out, so
why shouldn’t you?”
“Oh, Dan,” she broke out suddenly, throwing her arms round his neck, “I
didn’t quite know whether I loved you before--but I do now--Dan!”
There followed an interlude, during which the future was left in
abeyance.
“And I was wondering _how_ I was going to get a wedding-dress. Emmie and
I have talked for hours over it. Won’t I get a beauty now! White satin
with a long, long train. I saw one yesterday in a fashion-plate--oh!
just lovely.”
“I suppose you won’t feel married otherwise,” he said, with a quiet
smile. And then, seeing a quick shadow of dismay on her face, he laughed
and kissed her. “You shall drive to the church in a coach and four, with
the horses’ manes and tails all tied up with orange-blossoms, if you
like.”
She saw he was jesting kindly, and joined in the laugh--but
perfunctorily. The wedding-dress was the ecstatic, enrapturing part of
the ceremony. To jest upon it savoured of profanity.
After a while Lizzie returned to the tea-things, and, aided by Daniel,
washed them up in the kitchen.
“Only fancy! I am going to have servants to do this for me ever
afterwards,” she said brightly.
The possession of the trousseau money had strongly influenced the
girl’s facile temperament. The changed fortune ceased to be shadowy and
disquieting. It had assumed already a comforting, concrete form. The
overwhelming realisation of the potential finery that lay in those crisp
notes had crushed any feelings of delicacy in accepting the gift. The
first wondering delight and childlike impulse of gratitude to Goddard
was succeeded by a new sense of personal importance. Her garments would
be dazzling--the thought of them raised her to a height whence she could
almost look down upon Daniel. She no longer felt shy or constrained.
They returned to the parlour, a prim little room, with a pervading
impression of horse-hair, crocheted antimacassars, woolly mats and
wax-fruit, and again envisaged the future. Lizzie sat in her father’s
arm-chair, her hands deliciously idle in her lap, her mind all
transcendental millinery. Goddard rested his elbow on the table, pushed
back his hair from his forehead, and looked at her gravely.
“It’s not all going to be beer and skittles, you know, Liz,” he said.
“Although I have chucked the working-man, I am going in for precious
hard work all the same.”
“Why, whatever for, when you haven’t your living to get?” she asked in
surprise.
Like the apocryphal British workman, Lizzie hated work, and hated those
that liked it. She saw no point in unnecessary labour.
“No,” said Goddard, his face lighting up with the impulse of reply.
“Not my own living to get, thank God, but I have to help others to
get theirs. I may not be able to do much. But when a lot of men work
together, every little effort of each tells. And I mean, too, to come to
the front, Liz, for the nearer the front a man is, the bigger the things
he can do. And the front means a big position in Parliament, and that’s
what I’m going to try and get before I die. If I don’t, it won’t be for
want of fighting. But it will be a long time coming, and will take me
all I know. That’s why I didn’t take over the shop in Birmingham.”
“Oh, that’s why?” said Lizzie, trying to look sympathetic.
“Of course. You see it wasn’t because I suddenly became too big for my
boots--but I wanted all my time to myself for this other work. I have
made a fair start. I know something about the inner workings of things
already, and I can get men to listen to me when I speak. So I am going
to work like a nigger, Liz.”
She sat silent and plucked at her dress. It was very wonderful and
clever of Daniel to talk about becoming a Member of Parliament, but she
could not in the least see why it was necessary for him to work like a
nigger. In her heart she regretted the hosier’s shop, but she was afraid
to tell him so. She looked up at him and smiled, with the outside of her
features as it were, after the manner of dutiful yet uninterested woman.
Goddard, encouraged, continued to unfold his schemes. He was in intense
earnest, and spoke to her, as he had never spoken before, of the burning
questions of the day--the unequal struggle between labour and capital,
the iniquity of the living wage, the stupendous problem of the
unemployed, the great reforms on whose behalf he felt summoned forth to
fight. And as the passion grew upon him, his voice vibrated and his eyes
glowed, and his words waxed eloquent. He broke the bonds of his usual
speech with her, partly through a need of expansion, partly through a
half-conscious desire to awaken a little of the girl’s sympathy.
When he had done, and a little pause had followed, she looked up from
the puckering of her dress.
“That’s all lovely, Dan,” she said; “but what am _I_ to do?”
The question brought his thoughts down from the empyræan like a gash in
a balloon.
“Well, there will be the house to look after,” he said, in an altered
tone; “and then--well--there will be babies--and lots of things,” he
concluded lamely.
“Oh, I don’t like babies,” said Lizzie, with frank inconsequence. “They
always want such a lot of fussing after, and they’re always squalling.
I’m sure I shall want to smack them. Nasty little things.”
He looked at her rather perplexedly. It was a delicate subject. She
caught his glance and coloured.
“You shouldn’t go saying such things,” she murmured, giggling in
embarrassment--“and we not married yet!”
Then something seemed to catch him by the heart, a queer chilly grip,
and tug it downwards. He blamed himself for having suggested the idea,
although he had done so without shadowing thoughts. The innuendo jarred
upon him--he could not tell why.
“I am sorry,” he said gravely.
There was a silence for some time. Goddard idly turned over the leaves
of a rickety album filled with faded photographs of stiff, staring
people in the costume of the sixties.
Lizzie lay back in her chair, and devised the white satin wedding-dress.
At last she called to him softly.
“Dan.”
He turned, saw her reclining there, smiling at him. Her cheeks were so
pink, her fair hair so bewilderingly soft and fluffy, her parted lips
so fresh and inviting, her young figure so cleanly cut, in spite of the
ill-fitting dress and cheap corsets beneath, her white throat set off by
the coquettish blue ribbon so alluring, that the heart of the young man,
who knew little of the ways and fascinations of women, threw off the
cold grip in a great quick throb.
“You haven’t given me a kiss all the time, Dan,” she said without
stirring.
Well, he rose and kissed her.
And the next day he called on the vicar of the parish, and settled the
question of the banns. It was over. He felt lighter. There is nothing
that is more irksome to a strong-willed man than indecision, and Goddard
had passed through a period of grave misgiving.
On his way down the path to the vicarage gate, however, he met Mr.
Aloysius Gleam just entering it. The Member let fall his gold-rimmed
eye-glass in some surprise, as he greeted him.
“What, more miracles? You in the house of Rimmon?” he exclaimed, for
Goddard had been a thorn in the vicar’s flesh for some time past.
“I’m going to get married,” replied Goddard, by way of explanation.
The Member drooped his shoulders and lowered the point of his stick in a
helpless attitude, and looked at him with an air of dismay. “What _are_
you doing it for? Just when you ought to be going round the country like
a firebrand. Now you’ll be a damp faggot. I know. Go back and tell the
vicar you didn’t mean it. It was an elaborate ‘draw’ on your part.”
Daniel stuck his hands in his pockets and laughed.
“I feel inclined to answer you like Touchstone,” he said.
“The deuce you do,” said Gleam.
A quick glance passed between them, and a shade of annoyance came over
Goddard’s dark face. The analogy perhaps was closer than he intended.
The other might retort with the gibes of Jacques.
“Of course it isn’t my business,” added Gleam in a deprecating tone.
“But it might have been better for you to have waited--considering
the change in your fortune, and your scheme of life generally. Well, I
suppose folks will marry. It is even within the bounds of possibility I
may do it myself one of these days.”
He put up his eye-glass and passed his fingers over his tight fair
moustache, as if to prepare himself for the ordeal.
“It won’t interfere with any of our plans, I can assure you,” said
Goddard.
“That’s right. Don’t let it, for goodness’ sake. But marriage is a
function of two independent variables, as they say in the differential
calculus--and a deuced tough function too. Anyhow, if you’re bent upon
it, I wish you luck.”
They shook hands and parted. Goddard turned away slowly.
The Member’s words sounded again the note of warning, the same note that
had rung in those of the old man on the previous day, the same that had
rung in his own ears.
“But I should have been a knave to have done differently,” he thought to
himself. “There was only one alternative.”
He had deliberately chosen the part of the fool.
“I am damned glad,” he said aloud, swinging his stick. “I’ll walk
straight, now and ever afterwards, whatever happens.”
Three weeks afterwards they were married, and Lizzie’s wedding-dress,
to her trembling joy, was fully described in the _Sunington Weekly
Chronicle_.