"You were so obstinate. You came to me as 'cook and housekeeper,' and as
cook and housekeeper, and as nothing else, would you remain. If I
suggested any change, up would go your chin into the air. I dared not
even dine out too often, you were such a little tyrant. The only thing
you were always ready to do, if I wasn't satisfied, was to march out of
the house and leave me. Wherever did you get that savage independence of
yours?"
"I don't know. I think it must have been from a woman--perhaps she was
my mother; I don't know--who used to sit up in the bed and cough, all
night it seemed to me. People would come to see us--ladies in fine
clothes, and gentlemen with oily hair. I think they wanted to help us.
Many of them had kind voices. But always a hard look would come into her
face, and she would tell them what even then I knew to be untrue--it was
one of the first things I can recollect--that we had everything we
wanted, that we needed no help from anyone. They would go away,
shrugging their shoulders. I grew up with the feeling that seemed to
have been burnt into my brain, that to take from anybody anything you had
not earned was shameful. I don't think I could do it even now, not even
from you. I am useful to you, dad--I do help you?"
There had crept a terror into Tommy's voice. Peter felt the little hands
upon his arm trembling.
"Help me? Why, you work like a nigger--like a nigger is supposed to
work, but doesn't. No one--whatever we paid him--would do half as much.
I don't want to make your head more swollen than it is, young woman, but
you have talent; I am not sure it is not genius." Peter felt the little
hands tighten upon his arm.
"I do want this paper to be a success; that is why I strum upon the piano
to please Clodd. Is it humbug?"
"I am afraid it is; but humbug is the sweet oil that helps this whirling
world of ours to spin round smoothly. Too much of it cloys: we drop it
very gently."
"But you are sure it is only humbug, Tommy?" It was Peter's voice into
which fear had entered now. "It is not that you think he understands you
better than I do--would do more for you?"
"You want me to tell you all I think of you, and that isn't good for you,
dad--not too often. It would be you who would have swelled head then."
"I am jealous, Tommy, jealous of everyone that comes near you. Life is a
tragedy for us old folks. We know there must come a day when you will
leave the nest, leave us voiceless, ridiculous, flitting among bare
branches. You will understand later, when you have children of your own.
This foolish talk about a husband! It is worse for a man than it is for
the woman. The mother lives again in her child: the man is robbed of
all."
"Dad, do you know how old I am?--that you are talking terrible nonsense?"
"He will come, little girl."
"Yes," answered Tommy, "I suppose he will; but not for a long while--oh,
not for a very long while. Don't. It frightens me."
"You? Why should it frighten you?"
"The pain. It makes me feel a coward. I want it to come; I want to
taste life, to drain the whole cup, to understand, to feel. But that is
the boy in me. I am more than half a boy, I always have been. But the
woman in me: it shrinks from the ordeal."
"You talk, Tommy, as if love were something terrible."
"There are all things in it; I feel it, dad. It is life in a single
draught. It frightens me."
The child was standing with her face hidden behind her hands. Old Peter,
always very bad at lying, stood silent, not knowing what consolation to
concoct. The shadow passed, and Tommy's laughing eyes looked out again.
"Haven't you anything to do, dad--outside, I mean?"
"You want to get rid of me?"
"Well, I've nothing else to occupy me till the proofs come in. I'm going
to practise, hard."
"I think I'll turn over my article on the Embankment," said Peter.
"There's one thing you all of you ought to be grateful to me for,"
laughed Tommy, as she seated herself at the piano. "I do induce you all
to take more fresh air than otherwise you would."
Tommy, left alone, set herself to her task with the energy and
thoroughness that were characteristic of her. Struggling with
complicated scales, Tommy bent her eyes closer and closer over the pages
of _Czerny's Exercises_. Glancing up to turn a page, Tommy, to her
surprise, met the eyes of a stranger. They were brown eyes, their
expression sympathetic. Below them, looking golden with the sunlight
falling on it, was a moustache and beard cut short in Vandyke fashion,
not altogether hiding a pleasant mouth, about the corners of which lurked
a smile.
"I beg your pardon," said the stranger. "I knocked three times. Perhaps
you did not hear me?"
"No, I didn't," confessed Tommy, closing the book of _Czerny's
Exercises_, and rising with chin at an angle that, to anyone acquainted
with the chart of Tommy's temperament, might have suggested the
advisability of seeking shelter.
"This is the editorial office of _Good Humour_, is it not?" inquired the
stranger.
"It is."
"Is the editor in?"
"The editor is out."
"The sub-editor?" suggested the stranger.
"I am the sub-editor."
The stranger raised his eyebrows. Tommy, on the contrary, lowered hers.
"Would you mind glancing through that?" The stranger drew from his
pocket a folded manuscript. "It will not take you a moment. I ought, of
course, to have sent it through the post; but I am so tired of sending
things through the post."
The stranger's manner was compounded of dignified impudence combined with
pathetic humility. His eyes both challenged and pleaded. Tommy held out
her hand for the paper and retired with it behind the protection of the
big editorial desk that, flanked on one side by a screen and on the other
by a formidable revolving bookcase, stretched fortress-like across the
narrow room. The stranger remained standing.
"Yes. It's pretty," criticised the sub-editor. "Worth printing,
perhaps, not worth paying for."
"Not merely a--a nominal sum, sufficient to distinguish it from the work
of the amateur?"
Tommy pursed her lips. "Poetry is quite a drug in the market. We can
get as much as we want of it for nothing."
"Say half a crown," suggested the stranger.
Tommy shot a swift glance across the desk, and for the first time saw the
whole of him. He was clad in a threadbare, long, brown ulster--long,
that is, it would have been upon an ordinary man, but the stranger
happening to be remarkably tall, it appeared on him ridiculously short,
reaching only to his knees. Round his neck and tucked into his
waistcoat, thus completely hiding the shirt and collar he may have been
wearing or may not, was carefully arranged a blue silk muffler. His
hands, which were bare, looked blue and cold. Yet the black frock-coat
and waistcoat and French grey trousers bore the unmistakable cut of a
first-class tailor and fitted him to perfection. His hat, which he had
rested on the desk, shone resplendent, and the handle of his silk
umbrella was an eagle's head in gold, with two small rubies for the eyes.
"You can leave it if you like," consented Tommy. "I'll speak to the
editor about it when he returns."
"You won't forget it?" urged the stranger.
"No," answered Tommy. "I shall not forget it."
Her black eyes were fixed upon the stranger without her being aware of
it. She had dropped unconsciously into her "stocktaking" attitude.
"Thank you very much," said the stranger. "I will call again to-morrow."
The stranger, moving backward to the door, went out.
Tommy sat with her face between her hands. _Czerny's Exercises_ lay
neglected.
"Anybody called?" asked Peter Hope.
"No," answered Tommy. "Oh, just a man. Left this--not bad."
"The old story," mused Peter, as he unfolded the manuscript. "We all of
us begin with poetry. Then we take to prose romances; poetry doesn't
pay. Finally, we write articles: 'How to be Happy though Married,' 'What
shall we do with our Daughters?' It is life summarised. What is it all
about?"
"Oh, the usual sort of thing," explained Tommy. "He wants half a crown
for it."
"Poor devil! Let him have it."
"That's not business," growled Tommy.
"Nobody will ever know," said Peter. "We'll enter it as 'telegrams.'"
The stranger called early the next day, pocketed his half-crown, and left
another manuscript--an essay. Also he left behind him his gold-handled
umbrella, taking away with him instead an old alpaca thing Clodd kept in
reserve for exceptionally dirty weather. Peter pronounced the essay
usable.
"He has a style," said Peter; "he writes with distinction. Make an
appointment for me with him."
Clodd, on missing his umbrella, was indignant.
"What's the good of this thing to me?" commented Clodd. "Sort of thing
for a dude in a pantomime! The fellow must be a blithering ass!"
Tommy gave to the stranger messages from both when next he called. He
appeared more grieved than surprised concerning the umbrellas.
"You don't think Mr. Clodd would like to keep this umbrella in exchange
for his own?" he suggested.
"Hardly his style," explained Tommy.
"It's very peculiar," said the stranger, with a smile. "I have been
trying to get rid of this umbrella for the last three weeks. Once upon a
time, when I preferred to keep my own umbrella, people used to take it by
mistake, leaving all kinds of shabby things behind them in exchange. Now,
when I'd really like to get quit of it, nobody will have it."
"Why do you want to get rid of it?" asked Tommy. "It looks a very good
umbrella."
"You don't know how it hampers me," said the stranger. "I have to live
up to it. It requires a certain amount of resolution to enter a cheap
restaurant accompanied by that umbrella. When I do, the waiters draw my
attention to the most expensive dishes and recommend me special brands of
their so-called champagne. They seem quite surprised if I only want a
chop and a glass of beer. I haven't always got the courage to disappoint
them. It is really becoming quite a curse to me. If I use it to stop a
'bus, three or four hansoms dash up and quarrel over me. I can't do
anything I want to do. I want to live simply and inexpensively: it will
not let me."