A FAMILY IN EXILE
Dad Grimes had just finished the story of his nose and the cabman, and
the group in the bar of the Angel exploded like a shell. Dicky
Freeman's mouth seemed to slip both ways at once till it reached his
ears. The barman put down the glass he was wiping and twisted the
cloth in his fingers till the tears stood in his eyes. The noise was
deafening.
"An' 'e sez, 'Cum on, you an' yer nose, an' I'll fight the pair o'
yez,'" spluttered Dicky, with hysterical gasps, and went off again.
His chuckles ended in a dead silence. There was no sound but the rapid
breathing of the men. The barman flattened a mosquito on his cheek,
the smack sounded like a kiss. Dicky Freeman emptied his glass, and
then stared through the bottom as if he wondered where the liquor had
gone.
"I assure you for the moment I was staggered," said Dad, rounding off
his story. "I am aware that my nose has added to the gaiety of
nations, but it was the first time that it had been reckoned as a
creature distinct from myself with an individuality of its own."
Dad Grimes was a man of fifty, wearing a frock coat that showed a faint
green where the light fell on the shoulders, and a tall silk hat that
had grown old with the wearer. But for his nose he might have been an
undertaker. It was an impossible nose, the shape and size of a potato,
and the colour of pickled cabbage--the nose for a clown in the Carnival
of Venice. Its marvellous shape was none of Dad's choosing, but the
colour was his own, laid on by years of patient drinking as a man
colours a favourite pipe. Years ago, when he was a bank manager, his
heart had bled at the sight of this ungainly protuberance; but since
his downfall, he had led the chorus of laughter that his nose excited,
with a degraded pride in his physical defect.
It was Dicky Freeman's turn to shout, and he began another story as Dad
sucked the dregs of beer off his moustache. Dad recognized the opening
sentence. It was one of the interminable stories out of the Decameron
of the bar-room, realistic and obscene, that circulate among drinkers.
Dad knew it by heart. He looked at his glass, and remembered that it
was his fourth drink. Instantly he thought of the Duchess. With his
usual formula "'Scuse me; I'm a married man, y'know," he hurried out of
the bar in search of his little present.
It was nine o'clock, and the Duchess would be waiting for him with his
tea since six. And always when he stopped at the "Angel" on his way
home, he tried to soften her icy looks with a little present.
Sometimes it was a bunch of grapes that he crushed to a pulp by rolling
on them; sometimes a dozen apples that he spilt out of the bag, and
recovered from the gutter with lurching steps. But tonight he happened
to stop in front of the fish shop, and a lobster caught his eye. The
beer had quickened the poetry in his soul, and the sight of this
fortified inhabitant of the deep pleased him like a gorgeous sunset.
He shuffled back to the Angel with the lobster under his arm, wrapped
in a piece of paper.
One more drink and he would go home. He put the lobster carefully at
his elbow and called for drinks. But Dicky was busy with a new trick
with a box of matches, and Dad, who was a recognized expert in the idle
devices of bar-room loafers--picking up glasses and bottles with a
finger and thumb, opening a footrule with successive jerks from the
wrist, drinking beer out of a spoon--forgot the lapse of time with the
new toy.
Punctually on the stroke of eleven the swinging doors of the Angel were
closed and the huge street lamps were extinguished. Dad's eye was
glassy, but he remembered the lobster.
"Whersh my lil' present?" he wailed. "Mush 'ave lil' present for the
Duchess, y'know. 'Ow could I g'ome, d'ye think?"
He made so much noise that the landlord came to see what was the
matter, and then the barman pointed to where he had left the lobster on
the counter. He tucked it under his arm and lurched into the street.
Now, Dad could run when he couldn't walk. He swayed a little, then
suddenly broke into a run whose speed kept him from falling and
preserved his balance like a spinning top.
The Duchess, seen through a haze, seemed unusually stern tonight; but
with beery pride he produced his little present, the mail-clad
delicacy, the armoured crustacean. But Dicky Freeman, offended by
Dad's sudden departure in the middle of the story, had taken a mean
revenge with the aid of the barman, and, as Dad unfastened the
wrapping, there appeared, not the shellfish in its vermilion armour,
but something smooth and black--an empty beer-bottle! Dad stared and
blinked. A look at the Duchess revealed a face like the Ten
Commandments. The situation was too abject for words; he grinned
vacantly and licked his lips.
The Grimes family lived in the third house in the terrace, counting
from the lamp-post at the corner of Buckland Street, where, running
parallel to Cardigan Street, it tumbles over the hill and is lost to
sight on its way to Botany Road. It was a long, ugly row of two-storey
houses, the model lodging-houses of the crowded suburbs, so much alike
that Dad had forced his way, in a state of intoxication, into every
house in the terrace at one time or another, under the impression that
he lived there.
Ten years ago the Grimes family had come to live in Waterloo, when the
Bank of New Guinea had finally dispensed with Dad's services as manager
at Billabong. His wife had picked on this obscure suburb of working
men to hide her shame, and Dad who could make himself at home on an
ant-hill, had cheerfully acquiesced. He had started in business as a
house-agent, and the family of three lived from hand to mouth on the
profits that escaped the publican. Not that Dad was idle. He was for
ever busy; but it was the busyness of a fly. He would call for the
rent, and spend half the morning fixing a tap for Mrs Brown, instead of
calling in the plumber; he would make a special journey to the other
end of Sydney for Mrs Smith, to prove that he had a nose for bargains.
Mrs Grimes forgot with the greatest ease that her neighbours were made
of the same clay as herself, but she never forgot that she had married
a bank manager, and she never forgave Dad for lowering her pride to the
dust. True, she was only the governess at Nullah Nullah station when
Dad married her, but her cold aristocratic features had given her the
pick of the neighbouring stations, and Dad was reckoned a lucky man
when he carried her off. It was her fine, aquiline features and a
royal condescension in manner that had won her the title of "Duchess"
in this suburb of workmen. She tried to be affable, and her visitors
smarted under a sense of patronage. The language of Buckland Street,
coloured with oaths, the crude fashions of the slop-shop, and the
drunken brawls, jarred on her nerves like the sharpening of a saw. So
she lived, secluded as a nun, mocked and derided by her inferiors.
She was born with the love of the finer things that makes poverty
tragic. She kept a box full of the tokens of the past--a scarf of
Maltese lace, yellow with age, that her grandmother had sent from
England; a long chain of fine gold, too frail to be worn; a brooch set
with diamonds in a bygone fashion; a ring with her father's seal carved
in onyx.
Her daughter Clara was the image of herself in face and manner, and her
grudge against her husband hardened every time she thought of her only
child's future. Clara was fifteen when they descended to Buckland
Street, a pampered child, nursed in luxury. The Duchess belonged to
the Church of England, and it had been one of the sights of Billabong
to see her move down the aisle on Sunday like a frigate of Nelson's
time in full sail; but she had overcome her scruples, and sent Clara to
the convent school for finishing lessons in music, dancing, and
painting.
We each live and act our parts on a stage built to our proportions, and
set in a corner of the larger theatre of the world, and the revolution
that displaces princes was not more surprising to them than the
catastrophe that dropped the Grimes family in Buckland Street was to
Clara and her mother.
Clara had been taught to look on her equals with scorn, and she stared
at her inferiors with a mute contempt that roused the devil in their
hearts. She had lived in the street ten years, and was a stranger in
it. Buckland Street was never empty, but she learned to pick her time
for going in and out when the neighbours were at their meals or asleep.
She attended a church at an incredible distance from Waterloo, for fear
people should learn her unfashionable address. Her few friends lived
in other suburbs whose streets she knew by heart, so that they took her
for a neighbour.
When she was twenty-two she had become engaged to a clerk in a
Government office, who sang in the same choir. A year passed, and the
match was suddenly broken off. This was her only serious love-affair,
for, though she was handsome in a singular way, her flirtations never
came to anything. She belonged to the type of woman who can take her
pick of the men, and remains unmarried while her plainer friends are
rearing families.
The natural destiny of the Waterloo girls was the factory, or the
workshops of anaemic dressmakers, stitching slops at racing speed for
the warehouses. A few of the better sort, marked out by their face and
figure, found their way to the tea-rooms and restaurants. But the
Duchess had encouraged her daughter's belief that she was too fine a
lady to soil her hands with work, and she strummed idly on the
dilapidated piano while her mother roughened her fine hands with
washing and scrubbing. This was in the early days, when Dad,
threatened with starvation, had passed the hotels at a run to avoid
temptation, for which he made amends by drinking himself blind for a
week at a time. Then, after years of genteel poverty, the Duchess had
consented to Clara giving lessons on the piano--that last refuge of the
shabby-genteel. But pupils were scarce in Waterloo, and Clara's manner
chilled the enthusiasm of parents who only paid for lessons on the
understanding that their child was to become the wonder of the world
for a guinea a quarter.
This morning Clara was busy practising scales, while her mother dusted
and swept with feverish haste, for Mr Jones, the owner of the great
boot-shop, was bringing his son in the afternoon to arrange for lessons
on the piano. The Duchess knew the singular history of Jonah, the boot
king, and awaited his arrival with intense curiosity. She had married
a failure, and adored success. She decided to treat Jonah as an equal,
forgiving his lowly origin with a confused idea that it was the proper
thing for millionaires to spring from the gutter, the better to show
their contempt for the ordinary advantages of education and family.
She had decided to wear her black silk, faded and darned, but by
drawing the curtains; she hoped it would pass. From some receptacle
unknown to Dad she had fished out a few relics of her former
grandeur--an old-fashioned card-tray of solid silver, and the quaint
silver tea-set with the tiny silver spoons that her grandmother had
sent as a wedding present from England.
Clara had just finished a variation with three tremendous fortissimo
chords when she heard the wheels of a cab. This was an event in
itself, for cabs in Buckland Street generally meant doctors, hospitals,
or sudden death. She ran to the window and saw the hunchback and the
boy stepping out. Clara opened the door with an air of surprise, and
led them to the parlour where the Duchess was waiting. Years and
misfortune had added to her dignity, and Jonah felt his shop and
success and money slip away from him, leaving him the street-arab
sprung from the gutter before this aristocrat. Ray took to her at
once, and climbed into her lap, bringing her heart into her mouth as he
rubbed his feet on the famous black silk.
"I have never had the pleasure of meeting you, but I have heard of your
romantic career," she said.
"Well, I've got on, there's no denying that," said Jonah. "Some people
think it's luck, but I tell 'em it's 'ard graft."
"Exactly," said the Duchess, wondering what he meant by graft.
Jonah looked round the stuffy room. It had an indescribable air of
antiquity. Every piece of furniture was of a pattern unknown to him,
and there was a musty flavour in the air, for the Duchess, valuing
privacy more than fresh air, never opened the windows. On the wall
opposite was a large picture in oils, an English scene, with the old
rustic bridge and the mill in the distance, painted at Billabong by
Clara at an early age. The Duchess caught Jonah's eye.
"That was painted by my daughter ten years ago. Her teachers
considered she had a wonderful talent, but misfortune came, and she was
unable to follow it up," she said.
Jonah's amazement increased. It was a mere daub, but to his untrained
eye it was like the pictures in the Art Gallery, where he had spent a
couple of dull afternoons. Over the piano a framed certificate
announced that Clara Grimes had passed the junior grade of Trinity
College in 1890. And Jonah, who had an eye for business like a Jew,
who moved in an atmosphere of profit and loss, suddenly felt ill at
ease. His shop, his money, and his success must seem small things to
these women who lived in the world of art. His thoughts were brought
back to earth by a sudden crash. Ray was sitting on a chair, impatient
for the music to begin, and, as he never sat on a chair in the ordinary
fashion, he had paralysed the Duchess with a series of gymnastic feats,
twining his legs round the chair, sitting on his feet, kneeling on the
seat with his feet on the back of the chair, until at last an unlucky
move had tilted the chair backwards into a pot-stand. The jar fell
with a crash, and Ray laughed. The Duchess uttered a cry of terror.
"Yer young devil, keep still," cried Jonah, angrily. "Yer can pay fer
that out of yer pocket-money," he added.
"It was of no value," said the Duchess, with frigid dignity.
"Perhaps Miss Grimes will play something," said Jonah. "Ray's talked
of nothing else since daylight this morning."
Clara sat down at the piano and ran her fingers over the keys. She had
selected her masterpiece, "The Wind Among the Pines", a tone-picture
from a shilling album. Her fingers ran over the keys with amazing
rapidity as she beat out the melody with the left hand on the groaning
bass, while with the right she executed a series of scales to the top
of the keyboard and back. Jonah listened spellbound to the clap-trap
arrangement. He had the native ear for music, and he recognized that
he was in the presence of a born musician. Ray crept near, and
listened with open mouth to this display of musical fireworks. When
she had finished, Clara turned to Jonah with a languid smile, the look
of the artist conscious of divine gifts.
"My daughter was considered the best player at the convent where she
was educated," said the Duchess--"a great talent wasted in this
dreadful place."
"I niver 'eard anythin' like that in my natural," said Jonah with
enthusiasm. "If yer can teach Ray ter play like that, I'm satisfied."
"You may depend upon her doing her best with your son, but it is not
everyone who has Clara's talent," said the Duchess.
"Play some more," said Ray.
This time she selected a grand march, striking the dilapidated piano a
series of stunning blows with both hands, filling the air with the
noise of battle.
"That must be terrible 'ard," said Jonah.
"It takes it out of one," replied Clara, with the simplicity of an
artist.
Then she gave Ray his first lesson, showing him how to sit and place
his hands, anxious to impress the parent that she was a good teacher.
She declared that Ray was very apt, and would learn rapidly. An hour
later, Jonah paid for Ray's first quarter. Clara's terms were a
guinea, but Jonah insisted on two guineas on the understanding that Ray
would receive special attention.
But in spite of her promises, Ray's progress was slow. As Jonah had no
piano, the boy came half an hour early to his lesson to practise, but
the twenty minutes' journey from the Silver Shoe occupied the best part
of an hour, for Ray, who took to the streets as a duck takes to water,
could spend a morning idling before shop windows, following fiddlers on
their rounds, watching navvies dig a drain, with a frank, sensuous
delight in the sights and sounds of the streets, an inheritance from
Jonah's years of vagabondage. Then the street-arabs fell on him,
annoyed by his new clothes and immense white collar, and at the end of
the third week he reached home after dark with a cut on his forehead
and spattered with mud.
The next day Jonah called on Clara to make some other arrangements.
His tone was brusque, and Clara noticed with surprise that he was
inclined to blame her for Ray's mishap. He seemed to forget everything
when it was a question of his son. But all of the Duchess in Clara
came to the surface in her annoyance, and she suggested that the
lessons had better come to an end. Absorbed in his egotistic feelings,
Jonah looked up in surprise, and his anger vanished. He saw that he
had offended her, and apologized. Then he remembered what had brought
him. His overpowering desire to see this woman had surprised him like
the first symptoms of an illness. He had not seen her for three weeks,
and in the increased flow of business at the Silver Shoe had half
forgotten his amazing emotions as one forgets a powerful dream. Women,
he repeated, were worse than drink for taking a man's mind off his work.
In his experience he had observed with some curiosity that drink and
women were alike in throwing men off their balance. Drink,
fortunately, had no power over him. Beer only fuddled his brain, and
he looked on its effect with the curious dislike women look on smoking,
blind to its fascinations. As for women, Ada was the only one he had
ever been on intimate terms with, and, judging by his sensations,
people who talked about love were either fools or liars. True, he had
heard Chook talking like a fool about Pinkey, swearing that he couldn't
live without her, but thought naturally that he lied. And they had
quarrelled so fiercely over the colour of her hair, that for years each
looked the other way when they met in the street. But as he looked at
Clara again, something vibrated within him, and he was conscious of
nothing but a desire to look at her and hear her speak.
"My idea was to buy a piano, an' then yer could give Ray 'is lessons at
'ome," he said.
"That is the only way out of the difficulty," said Clara.
Jonah thought awhile, and made up his mind with a snap.
"Could yer come with me now, an' pick me a piano? I can tell a boot by
the smell of the leather, but pianos are out of my line. Clara's
manner changed instantly as she thought of the commission she would get
from Kramer's, where she had a running account for music."
"I shall be only too pleased," she said.
As they left the house she remembered, with a slight repugnance,
Jonah's deformity. She hoped people wouldn't notice them as they went
down the street. But to her surprise and relief, Jonah hailed a
passing cab.
"Time's money to me," he said, with an apologetic look.
Cabs were a luxury in Buckland Street, and Clara was delighted. She
felt suddenly on the level of the rich people who could afford to ride
where others trudged afoot. She leaned forward, hoping that the people
would notice her.
At Kramer's she took charge of Jonah as a guide takes charge of
tourists in a foreign land, anxious to show him that she was at home
among this display of expensive luxuries. The floor was packed with
pianos, glittering with varnish which reflected the strong light of
the street. From another room came a monotonous sound repeated
indefinitely, a tuner at work on a piano.
The salesman stepped up, glancing at the hunchback with the quick look
of surprise which Clara had noticed in others. They stopped in front
of an open piano, and Clara, taking off her gloves, ran her fingers
over the keys. The rich, singing notes surprised Jonah, they were
quite unlike those he had heard on Clara's piano. Clara played as much
as she could remember of "The Wind Among the Pines", and Jonah decided
to buy that one.
"'Ow much is that?" he inquired.
"A hundred guineas," replied the shopman, indifferently.
"Garn! Yer kiddin'?" cried Jonah, astounded.
The salesman looked in surprise from Jonah to Clara. She coloured
slightly. Jonah saw that she was annoyed. The salesman led them to
another instrument, and, with less deference in his tone, remarked that
this was the firm's special cheap line at fifty guineas. But Jonah had
noticed the change in Clara's manner, and decided against the cheaper
instrument instantly. They thought he wasn't good for a hundred quid,
did they? Well, he would show them. But, to his surprise, Clara
opposed the idea. The Steinbech, she explained, was an instrument for
artists. It would be a sacrilege for a beginner to touch it. Jonah
persisted, but the shopman agreed with Clara that the celebrated Ropp
at eighty guineas would meet his wants. A long discussion followed,
and Jonah listened while Clara tried to beat the salesman down below
catalogue price for cash. Here was a woman after his own heart, who
could drive a bargain with the best of them. At the end of half an
hour Jonah filled in a cheque for eighty guineas, and the salesman,
reading the signature, bowed them deferentially out of the shop.
Clara walked out of the shop with the air of a millionaire. To be
brought in contact even for a moment with this golden stream of
sovereigns excited her like wine. All her life she had desired things
whose price put them beyond her reach, and she felt suddenly friendly
to this man who took what he wanted regardless of cost. She thought
pleasantly of the ride home in the cab, but she was pulled up with a
jerk when Jonah led the way to the tram. He wore an anxious look, as
if he had spent more than he could afford, and yet the money was a mere
flea-bite to him. But whenever he spent money, a panic terror seized
him--a survival of the street-arab's instinct, who counted his money in
pennies instead of pounds.