already, but I felt something worse when Mrs. Clanarthur Boxed my
Ears. She said I was a Little Idiot, and that she had been culpably
Reckless to alow Me to Take Her on the Water, and what would Freddy
say? Freddy is Captain Clanarthur. So I said I would stand up to Him
with or without Gloves, Fight Him with Rivolverse across a necktie if
he liked, and that He could Divorse Her afterwardse and then she could
marry me, and everything would be jolly well settled all Round, as
she Had Told me He was aborrent to Her only the night before when she
kissed me under the Aft Awning three Times--which she Had Done, though
she called me an untruthful little Retch for saying so, and then she
had Histericks, and then what Uncle Podmore calls the Mallady of the
Wave came on, and I had to ship the oars and Hold Her Up, and she was
Awfully Bad. Mother on the Turbean xing to Boulogne was Nothing To it.
I am not Joking When I Tell You that We Drifted About in That beestly
Dinghy all night at the immanent Risk of Being Run Down by anything
from a Tramp Steamer to a Government Crooser, and if the Tide Had Not
Turned, which it did at 4 o’clock in the Morning, we should be as dead
now as Two People can be.
O crumbs, when I looked at Nini, who After jawing at me till she was
Tired Had Gone to sleep with Her Head on my Shoulder! By the Glimmaring
Light of Dawn she Looked as Old as Aunt Honoria, and not Half as Nice.
Her Swagger Evening Gown and Mantal were Ruined with Seawater, and
one Long Tale of her Lovely Hair was Washing about in the Bilje at
the Bottom of the Dinghy, we had shipped such a lot in the Night. Her
Forhead and one Eye were nearly Hidden by a Top Piece with curls that
had come off, though there was lots of Hair underneath it, and she was
Perfectly Blue with Cold and Fright.
I thought she must have been Pretty Old when she Married Captain
Clanarthur after all, and when I Remembered how mad I had been about
Her, and how I wanted to Snipe Clanarthur and Marry Her, I felt awfully
sick at having been such an unlimited ass.
She woke up and called me some more Names and then a Pilot cutter came
along bound for Portsmouth Pier, and I Haled the Pilot and He agreed to
take us back to Cowes Road for £1. And they Hawled us on Board because
we were too jolly stiff to clime up the cutter’s side and we Got back
to the Yacht in Time for Breakfast.
You may guess if the men of the Party chaffed me Before how frightfully
they chaff Now, I am Roasted about the Beastly Business from morning
till Night. Uncle Podmore told me they had sent out 2 Boats to Find
us and burned blue Lights. All Captain Clanarthur Said when He saw
Mrs. Clanarthur come up the yacht’s side like a Ragbag, was, “So there
You are, are you?” But suppose he is Lying Low to bring an Axion for
Divorse, do you suppose I shall have to marry Mrs. Clanarthur?
I do jolly well Hope Not. She is old enough to be my mother, and Has a
Perfectly awful temper.
Fancy me being as Pleased as a Fox-terrier with 2 tails when she let me
Kiss Her under the Deck Awning after dinner. Fellows with lots of good
sense can be asses at times.
Of course I tell you All this in Confidence on the Strict Q.T., because
you are Not like other Girls about Keeping a Secret. There is a Big
Review of the Home Fleet and the Swedish Squadron by the King to-day,
and the Fleet will be elluminated in the Evening after dinner, and
there will be Fireworks from the Victoria Pier. But whether it is my
having been Out all Night with Nini--I mean Mrs. Clanarthur--in that
rotten Dinghy or something else I don’t ixactly know, but I feel jolly
miserable.
I wish Greening minor was here, it would do me Good to give the little
Brute a regular licking. Fancy him Being in love with a Barmade and
writing her verses. And Regger, who has the nerve to make up to his
sister’s Jerman Governess. I can’t think why Fellows do such idiotic
Things.
I Think rather than Have to marry Mrs. Clanarthur I would Run away and
be a stoker like that Fellow in the newspapers. She looks quite young
again this afternoon and her Hair is beautifully done, but I keep on
seeing Her as she was at 4 this morning, when that pilot-cutter Found
us.
I am getting rather sorry for Clanarthur tied up to a Woman who Boxes a
Fellow’s ears and calls him Names for Nothing--that is, I should feel
sorry for him if I was quite Eesy in my mind about his bringing an
Axion for Divorse.
Ever your affeckshionate Brother,
TYNSTONE.
FOR VALOR!
The city of Smutborough was holding a solemn public function in honor
of one of her sons. Formerly a soldier in the Smutborough Regiment,
he had won his V. C. a long time back in the early days of the last
South African War. At the conclusion of hostilities, having, like many
other men, attained perfect competency and ripe experience with the
expiration of the age-limit, Color-Sergeant Stoneham was naturally
shelved as being of no further use to the nation, except in an
emergency like the last.
The rear of the Town Hall, Smutborough, formed one side of an unsavory
blind alley: a dingy _cul-de-sac_ blocked at the end by the high,
sooty, spike-bordered wall of what was termed, with mordant but
unconscious humor, the Workhouse Recreation Yard. The Workhouse loomed
large upon the opposite side. Though the great main entrance for misery
was in another street, a solid oaken door, hospitably garnished with
large nails and a double row of bristling prongs, exhibited upon a
mud-splashed fanlight above it the black-lettered legend, “Casual Ward.”
It was only one o’clock, and the door would not open before seven, but
a queue of deplorable applicants had already mustered before it. A
tall, upright, gaunt man of about forty, dressed in a weather-stained
jacket-suit of tweed, and wearing a shabby deerstalker low over his
haggard eyes, had been one of the last to attach himself to Poverty’s
kite-tail.
Against the wall of the Workhouse Recreation Yard was the excuse for
a considerable expenditure of public funds at a moment felt by the
humbler citizens of Smutborough to be extremely inopportune. The excuse
was let into the sooty brick masonry. It made a queerly-shaped bulge
in the middle of an oppressively new Union Jack which covered it, and
upon each side of this tantalizing mystery stood a large, pink, shining
police-constable, in the largest size obtainable of brand-new white
woolen gloves.
At the bottom of the blind alley were more constables, ready in case of
the mob of unemployed making a rush round from the front of the Town
Hall. But at present it surged, a human sea lashed to fury by the whip
of hunger and the voice of Socialism, in the square outside the long
row of first-floor windows where the sumptuous luncheon was laid for a
hundred guests.
“A’a’ah! T’ss’s! Ya’-’aah!”
“Close up here, close up!” A police-sergeant, hurrying from the bottom
of the alley, herded the struggling queue before the door of the casual
ward into a compact bunch. Then the rearward portals of the Town Hall,
before which a red-and-white striped awning had suddenly sprouted, were
thrown wide. A crush of rosetted stewards, carrying very shiny hats,
preceded the Mace-Bearer; the Mayor, a plump and rosy personage, in his
furred robes and chain of office, appeared, walking between a lovely
lady in sumptuous sables and an accurately-attired gentleman, whose
intense vacuity of eye, mechanical bow and smile, and inability to
utter anything without being first prompted by an attendant secretary
from behind, denoted him a Personage of the first importance....
The Sheriff followed with the Mayoress, the Aldermen and the guests
trooped after. And the mob at the other side of the Town Hall, making
a charge round the corner, and being repulsed by the police, vented
its indignation in such an outburst of boo’s that the Mayor’s speech
was delivered in dumb show. Everybody clapped when he had done,
though. Upon which the Personage, prompted by his attendant spirit,
delivered himself in short, House of Commons gasps of the contents of
a Be-ribboned roll of typoscript. The last sentence was audible: “And
let this! Be a perpetual! Reminder to this! And succeeding generations!
How our! Mother country! Rewards her! Heroic sons!” Everybody clapped
and applauded the Personage. The Personage, then, advancing upon
exquisitely-polished boots to the Union Jack with the mysterious bulge
under it pulled a white cord with a lavender kid glove, and brought
the flag down, revealing a square block of Caen stone bearing some
sculptural figures in low relief set in the masonry above a neat little
drinking fountain. Then the Personage, the lovely lady in furs, the
Mayor and Mayoress, Sheriff, Aldermen, guests, and stewards trooped
back into the Town Hall to luncheon, and the crowd surged back again
to boo the banqueters. But after the last of these had, under a
cross-fire of gibes and taunts, taken himself away, the turbulent ocean
of humanity rolled back into its foodless garrets and cellars, and the
Socialist leaders who had urged on the ring-leaders retired to dine at
a hotel. Subsequently the alley behind the Town Hall became gorged with
homeless persons seeking shelter for the night, and when seven o’clock
struck and the Casual Ward door opened, one rush of misery packed it
instantly from wall to wall, and Stoneham, V. C., late Color-Sergeant
in the Smutborough Regiment, found himself shut out.
He wondered, as he ruefully felt in his empty pockets, whether it would
end in his having to sell the Cross? He had never failed to raise money
on his reserve-pension when the General Brushmaker’s Union had forced
him to come out with the other men, because a non-union _employé_
had been taken on at the factory. Since then he had navvied, stoked,
scavenged, done everything and anything that a capable man might do to
get bare bread and common shelter for himself and his. Now the wife was
in Clogham Infirmary with two of the children, and another was dead of
clemming, and ... and the old wound from the cross-nicked Mauser bullet
pained him horribly. He was giddy and sick with starvation, and the
world was spinning round....
Just in time he caught at the edge of the new drinking fountain, and
saved himself from falling. The grudging glimmer from the fanlight over
the door of the Casual Ward showed him something that roused him as a
swooning man may be roused by a splash of icy water in his face. It was
his own name in shining gold letters, boldly incised upon a handsome
tablet under the sculptured block that jutted from the sooty brick wall.
“Lord above, what’s this?” gasped the man whom Smutborough had that
day toasted. He struck a match, the last he had, and read, beneath the
bas-relief which represented the city’s hero in the act of shielding
a wounded officer with his body from a supposititious volley of Boer
bullets:
TO COMMEMORATE THE GALLANT ACTION
BY WHICH COLOUR-SERGEANT H. STONEHAM,
OF THE SMUTBOROUGH REGIMENT,
AND A NATIVE OF THIS CITY,
WON THE VICTORIA CROSS.
IN ACTION, PAARDFONTEIN, TRANSVAAL, SOUTH AFRICA, 1901.
“Move on, you!” said the voice of a police-constable behind him.
And Stoneham, V. C., drove his freezing hands deep into his ragged
pockets, wheeled and obeyed.
“It’s a rum world!” He reeled a little in his gait, and whispered
thickly to himself, as if some of the champagne and grub that had been
consumed that day in his honor had got into his head by proxy. “Damned
queer from start to finish! But, in the long run, I’m a bit better off
than the bloke in the Bible. He asked for bread, and they gave him a
stone. And I’ve got a drinking fountain into the bargain!”
And the wet night swallowed him up.
MELLICENT
“Happy is the corpse, they say, that the rain rains on,” observed Mr.
Popham, “but knowing his rheumatic nature, I could have wished him a
drier day. However, we must take what comes, and it’s curious that what
comes is generally what one would have preferred to be without. Life is
very like a switchback railway,” continued Mr. Popham. “Now you’re up,
a-looking down upon other human beings; and now you’re down a-looking
up at ’em. And similarly your fellow-creatures as regards you. It’s a
curious reflection that I shan’t ever measure out his colchicum again;
or soothe the morning twinges in his knees and elbers with a lithia
lollipop in a glass of warm water; or hear him swear when I tighten
his straps and buckles; or fetch and carry his wigs between this and
the hairdresser’s in Regent Place. Who do those wigs belong to now?
Yesterday his coffin, an extra-sized, double oak casket, metal-lined,
with plated handles and silver name-plate, stood in there!” He jerked
his head at the double doors leading into the bedroom. “This morning we
accompanied him to Woking Cemetery. This afternoon they are a-reading
of the Will in Portland Place, and Odlett gave me his solemn word that
John Henry shouldn’t remove his ear from the library keyhole without
finding out whether a little bit on account of faithful services
rendered hadn’t been left to Frederick T. Popham, valet to the above.
For he promised to leave me something all along, and almost with his
last breath, ‘I haven’t forgotten you, Popham,’ says he. ‘You’ve been
remembered, you’ll find, in the Will.’ And ... Lord! Was that you? What
a turn you gave me, Miss Mellicent!”
“Why, you’re quite nervous, Mr. Popham, sir,” said Miss Mellicent.
Miss Mellicent had bumped at the door with the end of a coal-scuttle,
and now apologized, bringing it in. Miss Mellicent was a thin person
of some thirty London summers, dressed in a worn black gown with
stray threads sticking out where crape had been ripped off. Her hair
would have been a nice brown if it had been less dusty, her gray eyes
were timid and kind, and her dingy pale face had a look of belated
girlhood--was sometimes quite transfigured into prettiness when she
smiled.
“I’ll own I am a little unlike myself,” agreed Mr. Popham. “Perhaps
it’s his luggage all ready in a pile near the door, as if we were
off to a foreign Spa within the next five minutes, or going down to
Helsham to stop in his usual rooms in the south wing. Perhaps it’s his
going off so sudden in quite a mild attack. Perhaps it’s the strain
of the funeral this morning, perhaps it’s sympathy for Sir George
and the family, perhaps it’s a little anxiety on my own account! I
know what he had, and I’ve my notions as to how he’s disposed of it!
The likeliest way to bring about a lawsuit and get it into Chancery
would be his way, bless you! The embroilingest way; the way to bring
about the greatest amount of jealousy and bitterness; the way to cost
the most to all concerned and bring about the smallest return in the
way of satisfaction and profit to ’em, would be the way he’d give
the preference to over all. And if he was a-listening to me at this
minute,” said Mr. Popham, with a slight uncomfortable glance toward the
folding doors that led into the bedroom--“and I’m sure I hope he’s
better employed!--he’d own I’ve done him no more than justice!”
“The many years I’ve known General Bastling,” said Miss Mellicent,
“and it’s going on for twenty that he’s lodged with us four months in
each twelvemonth--I’ve never asked or cared to know. Was he a rich
gentleman?”
“Why, I should call him pretty snug at that,” said Mr. Popham. “Ten
thousand in Home Rails; a pretty little nest-egg of five thousand in
Government Three per Cents; a matter of sixteen hundred invested in
the Chillianmugger Anthracite Mining Company; and a nice little bit of
loose cash in the current account at Cox’s. That’s what I’ve my eye on,
to tell you the truth; and I don’t think it’s unnatural or greedy.”
“I would never believe you selfish or money-seeking,” said Miss
Mellicent, folding her hard-worked red hands upon her worn stuff apron,
“not if an Angel was to come down out of the stained-glass window in
church--I sit under it on a Sunday evening sometimes, when I’m not
wanted at home--and tell me so!”
“I hope I’m not naturally more of a groveler than other men in my
situation--my late situation--would be,” returned Mr. Popham. “But
forty odd is getting on in years, and I’m reluctant at my time of
life to go looking for another middle-aged gentleman to valet. The
young ones are too harum-scarum and given to late hours for a man
like me; and if they weren’t, they’d be unnatural phenomenons. A
nice little inn in a country town, with a decentish bar custom and a
solid bottle-and-jug department, and a cold lunch in the coffee-room
on market-days, would suit me; with Hunt, Harriers, Freemasons, and
Friendly Societies’ dinners to cater for; and a private understanding
with a few gamekeepers anxious to promote their own interests in a
quiet, unassuming way--the guards of the late and early Expresses--and
one or two West End poulterers and greengrocers as I have met in what
I might call the butterfly stage of my existence, when I wore silk
stockings and livery, floured my hair regular, wore a bookay on Levée
and Drawing-Room days, and would as soon have eaten cold joint or
cleaned the carriage as taken up coals. And why I haven’t relieved you
of the scuttle before this, is a question between me and my conscience.
Let me take it and put it down. It won’t be the first time, if it is
the last, will it?”
“Don’t, Mr. Popham, sir!” pleaded Miss Mellicent; “don’t speak in that
downhearted way.” Her red hands plucked at a corner of her dingy stuff
apron, her gray eyes were already pink about the rims. Tears rose in
them. She coughed and swallowed nervously.
“The Bastling Arms is the name of that there little inn,” said Mr.
Popham. “The sign is the same as the crest on _his_ notepaper and
his seal-ring and the lock of that despatch-box.” He pointed to the
despatch-box crowning the pile of solid, well-used, much be-labeled
portmanteaux and imperials that occupied the corner near the door of
the room--a comfortably furnished, rather dingy second-floor apartment
in a quiet street above, and running parallel with, Oxford Circus. “The
landlord died the day before yesterday--as if to oblige or aggravate
me, I don’t know which!--and the widow, knowing my ambitions, dropped
me a postcard to inform. Three hundred is wanted for the lease, stock,
and goodwill, and fifty for the furniture, stable and yard-effects.
A bargain, Miss Mellicent, if I only had the money! But as it goes,
I’m a hundred and fifty short--unless John Henry’s ear is tingling at
this moment with tidings of comfort and joy. Now, what do you mean by
lighting a fire as if I wanted coddling, when you’ve a dozen people to
look after, if you’ve one?”
Miss Mellicent was down on her knees at the old-fashioned grate, laying
a fire. She struck a match and lighted the kindling, and, though it was
mid-June, the bright blaze was welcome in the dingy sitting-room, whose
window-panes streamed with torrents of rain.
“The gentlemen are all out but the third-floor front,” she said,
“and when the rain began, and I thought of you sitting up here in
the dim light alone, it seemed as if I might do this much to make
things cheerfuller. For you’ve done so much for me ever since I came
here”--her red and blackened knuckles went up to her pink-rimmed
eyes--“you always done so much for me!”
“For you, my dear soul!” ejaculated Mr. Popham, with circular eyes.
“You make too much of things, Miss Mellicent!”
“That’s one of ’em,” cried grateful Mellicent, turning upon him a thin,
blushing face down which two tears openly trickled. “You’ve called me
‘Miss Mellicent’ from the first. From the time I came here to Mr. and
Mrs. Davis, an orphan, ten years old, in my cheap black frock, made out
of the skirt of poor mother’s mourning for poor father, you’ve always
called me ‘Miss.’ It helped me, somehow; just as your carrying up the
heavy cans of hot water and the coals did.”
“You was a bright-eyed, grateful little mouse, too,” said Mr. Popham
retrospectively, “and many’s the time I’ve had it in my mind to speak
to Mr. and Mrs. Davis about their driving a little thing like you so
hard. They’re past driving now, that’s one comfort! It’s years since
I’ve set eyes on either of ’em, now I come to think of it!”
“It’s years!” Mellicent echoed in a slightly bewildered way. “Why of
course it would be years!”
“She was a mountain, was the venerable lady, and the old gentleman
was a mere lath,” said Mr. Popham meditatively. “He used to answer
the letters we wrote year by year, season in and season out, from the
family seat at Helsham, from the Engadine, Aix, or Ems, Paris, or the
Riviera, to say we were coming on such a day. Ten years ago the writing
of the letters changed to a feminine hand--and since then I haven’t
seen him.”
“Why--don’t you know--he died?” said Mellicent.
“Did he really?” cried Mr. Popham. “Well, it was like him to keep it so
quiet, and like the old lady, too. Reminds me--I haven’t set eyes on
_her_ for a matter of five year and over!”
“Oh dear, Mr. Popham! she’s dead too!” gasped Mellicent in distress.
“She’d be pleased to know how little we’ve missed her, I know,”
responded Mr. Popham cheerfully. “Now, quite between ourselves,
Miss Mellicent, since for the first time since I’ve known you we’re
indulging in a confidential conversation--who’s carrying on the house?”
“Don’t you know? No--you’ve never asked or thought to ask in all these
years,” returned Mellicent. “The person who carries on the house
is--not quite--but I suppose she would be called so--a lady!”
“And very sensibly she manages,” approved Mr. Popham, “in keeping
out of the way and letting you do it for her. And a nice income she
makes, I’ll be bound! Why, the house has never been empty since first
I come here. Old gentlemen with ample means on every floor, toddling
out to their clubs when their various complaints permit, and dining
at home--and dining comfortably, too--when they don’t. Such a polish
on the boots, such a crispness of the breakfast bacon, such a flavor
about the coffee and the curries, such a tenderness about the joints,
such a dryness about the daily newspaper, and such an absence of
over-statement about the total of the weekly bill as, with all my
experience, I’ve never found elsewhere. And all owing to You! If your
modesty allowed you to think over yourself for one moment--which I
truly believe you’ve never done since you were born--you’d admit, Miss
Mellicent--that you’re a wonder!”
“Oh! do you truly mean it?” she cried, with her heart upon her lips.
“I do,” answered Mr. Popham, with warmth. “And if the present
proprietor of the lodgings wasn’t a lady--and knew what was good for
him--he’d----”
“Oh no! No, Mr. Popham, sir, no! He wouldn’t. No one could ever think
of me in such a way!” Her red and blackened hands went up to the
piteous, quivering face, and her lean bosom heaved behind the meager
bib of her scorched stuff apron. “Never!”
“Tell me now, upon your honor,” Mr. Popham pressed. “Haven’t you never
looked at nobody in that way yourself?”
Miss Mellicent fairly writhed and shuddered with nervousness. But
she laughed, looking away from Mr. Popham and into the old-fashioned
but handsome glass over the mantelshelf, in which, within an Early
Victorian frame of fly-spotted gilding, the reflection of Mr. Popham’s
alert, well-featured, respectable profile and her own poor, wistful
face appeared together.
“If you won’t ask me no more--yes, then! but he never dreamed o’ me!”
“More shame for him!” asseverated Mr. Popham stoutly. “Why, what a
put-upon young woman you are, Miss Mellicent! Since you were ten years
old, I do verily believe you’ve never had a pleasure, never had a
present, never had a friend, never had an outing--no more than you’ve
had a sweetheart.”
“Ah, but,” she cried, with a happy laugh, “I have had a friend! You’ve
been my friend, haven’t you? And I have had pleasure in knowing that.
And I’ve had an outing--twice. Once Uncle Davis took me to the World’s
Fair--it was my twelfth birthday--and once, two years later, you
treated me to the pantomime.”
“Did I? And uncommon generous and considerate it was of me, I must
say, to have done that much for you, you poor little neglected, lonely
creature!” uttered the remorseful Mr. Popham.
“I never forgot it,” Mellicent cried, with beaming eyes. “The glory and
the splendor, the living roses and the talking animals and the shining
fairies, and you to explain it all and be so kind. I never forgot it!
Who could?”
“Why, I’m beginning to remember something about it myself!” said Mr.
Popham, clearing. “We partook of a dozen oysters and some shandy-gaff
at a fish-bar on the way home. According to present views, we ought to
have shaken carbolic powder over that shellfish instead of pepper, and
washed it down with Condy’s Fluid; but, being behind the present times,
we enjoyed ourselves.”