JOHNNY AT HOME
Away with wooer’s gallivanting, and all the soft and sugary stuff of
dreams. A sterner wind than Zephyr speeds me on my way, and lands me,
hard of purpose, in the midst of London, and blows me with a crack up
against Johnny’s door. He is established for the time being, with his
mother, in a luxurious flat in Victoria Street, and the round
red-glass stove in his hall is not more glowing with a warmth of
welcome than is the face with which he greets me.
“I say, Dick,” he says presently, “who spoke of fairies?”
“Not I, Johnny.”
“Didn’t you? I say, how’s Miss Christmas, Dick?”
“She is very well, Johnny; she and I are engaged to be married.”
I would not appeal to his generosity--of that I had been
determined--through any shadow of misunderstanding. He bore the blow
like a Briton, a little huskily, with a little affectation, in the
first of the shock, of bending down to tie his shoe.
“O!” he said, rising apoplectic, and with a quivering lip. “I’m sure I
give you joy, old boy. I could never quite believe, you know, in your
indifference. Who could, with such a prize before him? It’s all in the
right order of things, you know; like--like the _honi soit_, and _quis
separabit_ and the rest of them. I hope Lord Skene approves?”
“Not he.”
“Then he’s no gentleman.”
“He’s no fool, perhaps. Johnny, I’ve come primed with an enormous
budget of news to explode on you.”
“Explode away, then.”
Whether it was the sobering effect of my first astounding stroke, or
the absence of emotional distractions, I don’t know; but he received
my story from beginning to end this time with a grasp and
understanding that were positively pathetic.
“I’ll tell you,” he said, when I had reached a finish. “You must come
with me to-morrow and see Shapter. He’s our family solicitor, and as
sharp as flints. This thing’s got beyond the private and personal
note--don’t you agree with me?”
“I’m afraid I must, Johnny.”
“Now, look here, Dicky; you’re giving me my first chance at what I
have always pined for and never had the luck nor the figure to get--a
personal part in a real, picturesque, mystery-and-murder romance. I’m
not going to be excused out of it, nor forbidden to engineer it as
lavish as I please. It’s the great opportunity of my life, and I shall
take it unkind if you refuse me a free hand to work it. You’re not to
have a share at all in the financing of the venture--you understand
that. If I allowed you one, it would rub all the gilt off my own
make-believe.”
I understood him, and his fine delicacy. This was his way of assuring
me the practical help which I could not but need.
“Put it as you like, Johnny,” I said. “You’re a dear good fellow every
way.”
“Very well,” he answered; “that’s understood. Shapter will
stage-manage the thing, and all we’ve got to do is to dress up and
play our parts like professionals. My eye! I hope there’s a coronet
among the properties. You see, it’s got to the point when, in my
opinion, a reputable independent witness is not only wanted, but
indispensable. You can’t run this any longer on your own
responsibility--you might get into no end of scrapes; and, as to me,
why, I haven’t shown any partic’lar gift for doing the detective, have
I?”
“You betray a tendency, perhaps, Johnny, to jump too hastily to
conclusions.”
“Ah! you may go into fits, if you like. I had my turn of ’em with
Drysalter. My word he _was_ a pepper-castor! I say, Dick----”
“Yes, Johnny?”
“You’re quite sure you and Miss Christmas are engaged?”
“Perfectly certain, Johnny.”
“You ain’t by chance thinking of anybody else, similar sort of name,
are you?”
“No; there’s no mistake about it.”
“Ah!”
He pondered a little, sombrely.
“Did she know you were coming here, to see me?” he asked presently.
“Yes, I told her. Perhaps you would like to know what she remarked
upon it.”
“Shouldn’t I!”
“She said, ‘I’m sure, for my sake, Richard, he’ll take care of you.’”
“_Did_ she say that, Dick--_did_ she?”
“Her very words, old fellow.”
“By George! tell her I’ll never let you out of my sight until it’s to
give you back to her.”
He got up in some emotion, and walked to the window. If in all that
hurrying panorama beneath his eyes, that endless procession of shapes
and shadows all set on overtaking and outstripping one another in the
race for wealth, there was moving onward one only other soul as
disinterestedly intent as he on a brother’s welfare, the old dark
city, I am sure, might yet boast of the seed of promise in its veins.
I dined at the flat that evening. I was not introduced to Johnny’s
mamma until, having entered the banqueting-hall, my attention was
called to an extraordinary old lady seated already at the head of the
table in a wheel-chair in the nature of a portable throne. She was
enormously squat and fat, like a loaf, and her head, I fear, bore no
more testimony to the efficacy of “Grafto” than had the late lamented
analyst’s. The pile on it, nominally golden, but of a hue that never
was on sea or land, was so glaringly, even so loosely adjusted, that,
if she had turned a great bird’s nest upside down on her head, the
deception could not have been more flagrant. It’s size and
precariousness so engrossed my attention, that once, when a blundering
footman knocked it crooked with a plate, and she said placidly, “You
nearly upset my hair, Richard!” I felt as if the rebuke were personal
to myself, and blushed over the involuntary movement I had made to
catch it before it fell into the soup. The man put it straight like a
dish cover, without his mistress, or himself, or anybody else
exhibiting the least disturbance; and then I comprehended upon what
purely undissembling terms the article stood, and felt that one could
no more quarrel with it on the score of mendacity than with a bonnet.
I have never seen a mass of woman so complacent and imperturbable. She
sat basking in speechless comfort, and only emitted, at intervals and
at large, rich oracular remarks about the food. These might be
understood to owe their provocation either to the nice constitution of
some particular dish, or dishes, or to one’s unappreciative attitude
towards such in their passing. Thus, the dictum “The leg of a pheasant
and the wing of a grouse,” pronounced significantly during the game
course, may have been interpretable into a general proposition of
fitness or a personal admonition--there was no telling from the
expression of the speaker, because she was absolutely without any, nor
from the direction of her eyes, which she could only move by moving
her whole body with them, a process much too laborious for the
occasion. I could never get rid, however, of an uncomfortable feeling
that there was something in these utterances aimed aggressively at
myself and my gastronomic perversity, as when, as if in correction of
some spirit of contradictoriness observed in me, she suddenly decreed,
“Fry bread-crumbs in butter, but sippets in dripping,” or appeared,
when I was in the very act of helping myself from a particular dish,
to throw an unfounded aspersion upon my age by asserting with
finality, “Crack no nuts at all, if you can’t crack ’em with your
teeth.”
Her last remark but one occurred at dessert, when she suddenly
asseverated, without looking at anything, “The late Prince Consort
always ate his orange with a spoon,” a statement which caused me
blushingly to lay down my knife and fork. And finally, having eaten a
stupendous dinner, with the large unimpassioned confidence of one who
had never yet been mistaken in her digestion, with the observation on
her lips that “The late Duke of Wellington used to remark that when
it’s time to turn over it’s time to turn out,” she was wheeled from
the room by the man called Richard, and disappeared from my ken for
ever.
But Johnny (who, by the way, wore a white waistcoat, with real
turquoise buttons), put my inward sniggering all to shame by his
perfectly natural acceptance of this remarkable parent. He was
dutiful, and attentive, and always respectful in his attitude towards
her--unconscious of any reason, indeed, why she should figure as
something slightly abnormal to alien eyes. It had occurred to me,
irresistibly but abominably, how Ira would have regarded such a
mother-in-law. Now, hearing the good fellow expatiating on his mamma’s
generosity and loving-kindness, I was ashamed of myself and joined
warmly in the eulogium.
These two lived in the lap of wealth. The whole flat was alive with
gorgeous, soft-stepping flunkeys, whose plush breeches took the
doorways with beauty. Mrs Dando herself, for all her bulk, had been
caked with diamonds. Yet, I believe, the enormous residuum of that
wealth, when the price of its ostentation was deducted, was devoted
almost exclusively to good works. Which of us, humbler endowed, could
make the same boast relatively? Certainly I had no reason to criticise
a display, whose moral, as it affected me alone, was all of a delicate
helpfulness and generosity.
Johnny and I sat up pretty late together, discussing my affairs; and
when I left my friend, to return to the modest quarters where I had
left Geoletti awaiting me, it was only to breach, by a little interval
of sleep, the business on whose full tide his wealth, and help, and
devotion were to launch me.
At eleven o’clock on the following morning I went to my appointment,
accompanied by the Italian. Mr Shapter’s offices were in Lincoln’s Inn
Fields; and it gave me my first real inkling, perhaps, of the worldly
consequence of my little half-condescended-to old schoolfellow, when I
observed with what deference, and with what disregard of the prior
claims of lesser waiting clients, he was ushered into the great man’s
presence.
I am not going to detail the processes of the interview which
followed. It would be merely to retread well-trodden ground. My story
and Geoletti’s were heard, and balanced, and compared, and the right
inferences drawn from them, with an insight and acumen which gave me a
high opinion of the qualities upon which great legal reputations are
based. The conclusion is the essential thing, and that is related in a
line. It was to be Mother Carey first; and, after her, Aosta and
Lapluietonnante.