A PRINCE OF WALES was born, and Mr. Rollinson re-christened a row of
houses which he had acquired. The original builder had gone incautiously
on a certain evening in the early part of ’41 to inspect his property—an
act nobody else thought of performing—and stumbled into one of the
numerous holes that lined the approach. His widow found herself unable
to carry on the building operations, and Mr. Rollinson, who, owing to
popular prejudice, had just given up a career on the turf and some
profitable transactions near the prize ring, offered her two hundred
pounds ready cash for the lot.
“Could you make it two fifty, Mr. Rollin-son?”
“I’ll make it three hundred, because I like your manner.”
“Oh, you dear good generous soul!” she cried.
He paid in rather greasy-looking banknotes, and, later on, married her,
and thus secured a return of the amount.
The Albert Edward estate was announced as specially suitable for newly
married people, and these came, in pairs, attracted by the title and by
the health statistics of the neighbourhood; a few carping critics pointed
out that the agreeable figures were due to the sparsity of the
population, but no one troubled to follow the argument. Meanwhile Mr.
Rollinson ordered that building should go on with haste to meet the
demands of would-be tenants, who, by an ingenious scheme of payments,
became in a term of years responsible owners of the property, and he only
relinquished the task when children began to arrive and the dwellings, in
consequence, showed signs of wear and tear. He then went to Finsbury
Park, and laid out the Princess Alice estate; later he proceeded to
Hammersmith, and planned and carried out the Duke of Edinburgh estate.
These houses might be exhibited at the present day, a tribute to
Rollinson’s loyalty and industry, but for the interference of borough
officials. By the time these steps were taken, Mr. Rollinson had
disengaged himself from interest in the various properties, but one can
understand the pain given by the action of the authorities to a man whose
official letter paper bore the heading, “Not for an Age, but for all
Time.”
Ernest Napoleon, the son, was born in ’43, and the event is registered at
the church in Hart Street, Bloomsbury; his father, despite activities
concerning new dwellings, preferred to reside in an older quarter of
town. Mr. Rollinson found time to take a part in public life, and I have
ascertained that he was one of 170,000 special constables sworn in at the
time of the threatened Chartist riots; unfortunately, on the day of the
meeting at Kennington Common, he was suffering from a slight headache,
and he advised his neighbour, Dr. Fennell, to order him to stay in bed.
Friendship between himself and his medical man increased as Mr. Rollinson
spoke of his fortunate investments.
“Want you to do me a great favour, George,” asked Dr. Fennell, meeting
him one day near the Museum. “My idea is that I ought very soon to be
able to retire, and cultivate a garden in the country. But progress in
my profession is slow.”
“You’re as safe as ’ouses,” remarked Mr. Rollinson,—“safe as some ’ouses,
I mean—providing you’re not fool enough to go in for speculation.”
“Speculation,” declared the doctor warmly, “is the last vice I should
indulge in. All I want you to do, the next time you see a good thing in
prospect, is just to let me come in with you. I’ve five thousand pounds
put by, and—call me ambitious, or what you will—I should like to make it
ten. Promise me you’ll do your best.”
“Can’t guarantee success, mind you!”
“My dear George,” protested the other, “give me credit for a fair amount
of common sense.”
The Great Exhibition was a year or two distant, but preparations were
already being made, and Mr. Rollinson heard of several investments in
regard to it that promised well; a scheme for obtaining all the printing
work sounded so excellent that he brought it to the notice of his friend;
the drawback was that only five thousand pounds appeared to be required.
On Fennell’s earnest appeal he agreed to stand aside, and allow the
doctor to take full advantage of the opportunity.
“But don’t you go forgetting that I warned you there was a risk.”
“Nothing venture, George,” said Fennell contentedly, “nothing have!”
When the auction took place in Bloomsbury Square, Mr. Rollinson acting,
so it was rumoured, from motives of generosity towards an old and valued
friend overtaken by misfortune, made arrangements with dealers, and
purchased nearly all of Dr. Fennell’s furniture. He also bought the
remainder of the lease. The goodwill he obtained at a fair price, and
sold at another, and the ground floor was let to a new man who was told
to keep the practice going for sixteen or eighteen years.
“What’s the idea of arranging that, Mr. R.?” asked his wife respectfully.
“Don’t you ask questions,” he retorted. “I’m looking well ahead!”
“If it’s something in store for our boy, I’m quite satisfied.”
“It is something for my boy, but I don’t care a hang whether you are
satisfied or not.”
“Do you think we ought to get a governess in for him, Mr. R.?”
“I shall take charge of his education, and I don’t want no one
interferin’. I’m a going to have him brought up proper, so as he’ll turn
out to be a credit to me, later on. And, although it’s got nothing to do
with you, I don’t mind mentioning that trouble will be no object. No
object, whatsoever. I’ve got along pretty well without much beyond
readin’ and writin’ and figurin’, and it stands to reason he’ll have a
better chance than what I did, if he’s fitted out more complete. But
don’t you go putting your spoke in, or else me and you’ll have words.
Quite enough for you that he’s going to be brought up to be a doctor and
a gentleman. Especially a gentleman!”
Although the printing scheme had ended in disaster, owing to the action
of a mysterious gentleman in the City, there were others of a more solid
nature in connection with the Hyde Park show, and it was said at this
time that it was only necessary for Mr. Rollinson to be mixed up in any
transaction to ensure success, so far as he was concerned. Some might
endure stabs at the hand of Fortune, but Rollinson always came through
safely. Oftentimes his name did not appear, and knowing folk therefore
multiplied his gains by twenty to make sure they were well within the
mark.
We are now at ’51.
It was during this year that the boy Ernest first gained special
attention, and caused his father’s pride to increase. Mrs. Rollinson,
with the improvement in income, and aided by a dressmaker of Theobald’s
Road, cultivated a definite note in apparel, and her favourite costume
was one of a tartan pattern, full in the flounces and so tightly stayed
at the waist that the poor lady’s complexion was sometimes scarlet,
sometimes purple. At the start, she had, for motives of economy, herself
made the child’s clothes, but the boy reported to his father that these,
by reason of their amplitude—
“You must allow for growing,” urged his mother.
—These caused him to become the object of ridicule, and his father at
once put a stop to home manufactures. Ernest, thereafter, during
Exhibition year, wore suits of velvet with frilled knickerbockers, and a
stiffly carded cap with a blue tassel dependent, and his appearance
extorted nothing but admiration as he walked, hand-in-hand with his
father, along the transept of Mr. Joseph Paxton’s great building of
glass. The boy had been furnished with several facts and arguments in
connection with the place, and these he recited in a clear, distinct
voice.
“Looking around, dear papa, at this striking scene, it seems impossible
to think that war will again occur in our time.”
And,
“I believe this immense building covers twenty acres of ground, and is no
less than two thousand feet long. Please correct me, papa, if I am in
error.”
Quite distinguished-looking ladies and gentlemen took notice of the boy’s
intelligence, and some gave him fourpenny pieces, patting him on the cap,
and telling him he was a fine little fellow; a well-known politician
prophesied of him, on one occasion, that he would grow up to be an
Englishman in the best sense of the word. You can imagine Mr.
Rollinson’s delight at these compliments, and the satisfaction in finding
his own views confirmed from responsible quarters. It was his method, in
regard to domestic affairs, to ascertain Mrs. Rollinson’s wishes and then
to give instructions that the exact opposite should be adopted, but,
returning home after one of these gratifying afternoons in Hyde Park, he
took the unusual course of inviting her to his study, where, in
smoking-cap and dressing-gown (a change from the restraint of out-door
clothes) he bade her take the easy-chair, whilst he himself stood near
the empty fireplace and leaned an elbow on the mantelpiece, in an
attitude imposed by more than one artist upon the Prince Consort.
“You will no doubt say, Mrs. Rollinson,” he remarked, “that making money
as I do now, and not doing much work for it, we ought to go on a steppin’
up the ladder. Allow me to remind you that sometimes I don’t retain all
the cash I receive. Sounds peculiar, but it’s a fact. I find the money
that takes the most trouble to get is the money that stays with me
longest. Putting that all aside, your view, womanlike, is that we’ve
only got one life to live in this world, whatever ’appens to us in the
next, and that we’re entitled to make the most of it. You’ll tell me
that we both of us had a hard time in the early days, and we’re justified
in claiming our reward. And mind you, there’s something in your
argument.”
Mrs. Rollinson, much astonished at this commendation of her presumed
opinions, could find no words either to protest or to agree. She
smoothed her crimped hair and bowed.
“But perhaps,” he went on in the same amazing tones of deference,
“perhaps you won’t mind if I point out that we’re living now in a very
fair state of comfort. We have roast meat every other day; if you feel
inclined to go now and again to see Mr. Wigan at the St. James’s, why,
you’ve only got to say so. And this brings me to the point of what I’m
talking about. Why shouldn’t we go on as we’re going now, not wasting
money specially, not ’oarding it to any special degree, but going a
reg’lar buster in regard to the boy? Giving him chances that his father
never had, seeing that he has every opportunity of growing up so that he
can take his place amongst the ’ighest of the land? Now then, Mrs. R.!
If you’ve got anything further to remark on the subject, here’s the time
to say it, or ever after hold your peace.”
“Sometimes,” she ventured to remark, “you’ve pitched into me and told me
I was spoiling him.”
“There’s a right way of doing it,” he retorted, “and a wrong way of doing
it.”
“And you’ve said, more than once, that to make a man of him he ought to
go through the mill, same as what you did.”
“There again, there’s two ways open.”
“If you can find the right way, Mr. R., I’m perfectly agreeable.”
“You’re a wise woman,” he declared, “although very often you manage to
conceal the fact. And I promise you faithfully that if you leave it all
to me, you won’t have no reason to be sorry!”
Ernest grew up tall, slim, good-looking, and with fair, curly hair; it
was therefore reckoned impossible to make him a doctor. Apart from this,
he showed no special intelligence, and at the new military college at
Sandhurst the masters said caustically it was a pity the lad had not been
born in America, for then the Civil War there would have been of very
short duration. Discouraged by these comments, Ernest, of his own
accord, left the College, thus depriving the British army of his
services, and, coming back to town, took rooms in Jermyn Street, and
mentioned to his father and mother that he proposed to look about him, a
task which it is well known cannot be done in a hurry. Money was
supplied from Bloomsbury Square, and it appeared to have some peculiar
quality, for it all slipped through Ernest’s fingers with the greatest
possible ease. Having, in spite of his defects, an amiable disposition,
he soon found acquaintances, mainly amongst other men who were also
looking about, and when they discovered he had money at his command, and
that his cheques were always—after sometimes a brief delay—honoured,
their admiration of his qualities knew no bounds.
“You’ve got a simple manner,” they said, “but, by gad, underneath that
there’s any amount of cunning and cleverness.”
“Really think so?” inquired Ernest, pleased.
“Enough for ten ordinary people,” they declared. “Got a fi’pun note
about you?”
Also, they gave him sound advice in regard to keeping well in with the
governor: a dinner was arranged at a club to which one of them belonged,
and, at the expense of Ernest, Mr. Rollinson was entertained, and made
much of; Wilner (who had been twice through the Bankruptcy Court, using
up several pails of whitewash and coming out not quite clean)—Wilner made
a speech, proposing old Rollinson’s health, declaring that their guest
was one of the bulwarks of the nation, and that his well-equipped son
would, later on, when he had finished looking about, become one of the
foremost men in the State. Privately, Wilner told Mr. Rollinson that all
our best politicians had sown their wild oats in early days, and gave an
amusing and little-known anecdote concerning a member of the Cabinet.
“What he wants,” said old Rollinson, glancing at his son, “is
concentration, if you know what it means, sir.”
“That will grow on him,” remarked the other lightly. “All he has to do
just now is to make plenty of friends. And it isn’t for a mere amateur
like myself to give advice to an experienced man of the world like George
Rollinson—”
Oddly enough, the term had never before been applied to him. Old
Rollinson fixed his cigar at a more rakish angle.
“But if I were you, I should see that, for a year or two at any rate, he
was not stinted of money.” Wilner gazed reflectively at his glass of
claret. “I’ve seen so many youngsters, fine, promising, delightful lads,
go to the deuce just for want of a few paltry hundreds. And you needn’t
begrudge it, you know. By all accounts you make it easily enough.”
The rest of the dinner-party, once they had, as Wilner neatly phrased it,
put off the old man, went to the Argyll Rooms, and later to Bob Croft’s
in the Haymarket (no use in going to Croft’s until midnight), where
Ernest insisted upon playing the harp, with the aid of his walking-stick;
when the police came to make their usual nightly round, Ernest demanded
the company of the Inspector in the Varsoviana. Wilner and the others
were satisfied with the efforts of their pupil and allowed him, at his
special request, to pay for everything. This was the occasion when
Ernest lighted a cigar with one of the notes given to him by his father,
and found some difficulty in making the paper burn.
There were times when Ernest, troubled with remorse and a severe
headache, spoke of giving it all up, and returning to Bloomsbury Square;
the bodyguard had to use their best powers of derision. An accusation of
want of pluck generally proved effective; later, a slip of the pen on the
part of Ernest gave them a better hold, and they had only to draw his
attention to the punishment awarded by the law for forgery. Old
Rollinson fell ill, in consequence of a chill sustained on the steamboat
returning from Greenwich after his new doctor had ordered him a sea
voyage, and the remittances stopped. A new and promising-looking pigeon
flew into the district of the Circus; Wilner and his colleagues dropped
the acquaintance of Ernest, who could find no better companion than a
wise young housemaid at Jermyn Street. The girl gave him good advice and
went with him to Bloomsbury Square, waiting at the railings whilst he
entered to see his father, to make frank avowals, and to impersonate the
prodigal son. He came out in less than half an hour, and it seemed at
once evident that the fatted calf was still alive.
“Says I’ve disappointed him,” reported Ernest tearfully, “and that he
never wants to see me again. Declares he did his best for me, and all
I’ve done has been to spend nearly every penny he gained, and there’s
nothing to show for it, excepting a good-for-nothing, broken-down young
man. And mother agreed with him.”
“Appears to me,” remarked Helen, “some one is going to have the
responsibility of looking after you.”
“I wish you’d marry me.”
“That will be about the best plan,” she agreed.
Ernest Rollinson died in ’64, and soon after the old people went. Young
Mrs. Rollinson, putting her baby boy away with some working people in
Clerkenwell, entered service again.
A Home for Indigent Bookmakers found itself benefited by the terms of the
Bloomsbury Square will; nothing was left to the son’s family, in spite of
the device used in christening the baby. Helen worked hard in her good
situation and saved money, paying the folk in Corporation Lane weekly,
and now and again snatching an hour off to see her boy. She was there
one afternoon in December watching with amusement his celebrated
impersonation of a policeman on the track of a Fenian (he had some new
piece of cleverness each time she paid her furtive visits) when a
tremendous clatter came from the wall of the prison opposite, the house
trembled, plaster of the ceiling fell in a thick white shower, and then
the place collapsed. Helen Rollinson found herself pulled out of the
débris and screamed loudly for her George; they brought to her a maimed
child, and she, almost demented, was nursing the poor thing in the
confusion of the street, and begging it not to die, when Master George
himself trotted up, safe and sound, demanding of his mother whether she
had noticed the splendid fireworks. She placed the injured child in the
hands of one of the doctors, heard that the woman of the house was not
expected to recover, and rushed away with her boy from the disastrous
scene.
“Well for you, Helen,” said her excellent mistress, “that you are able to
show me your marriage lines, otherwise it would be my duty, as a strict
Churchwoman, to turn you out of the house, neck and crop. As it is, you
have practised deceit on me, and I am afraid we must look upon this
dreadful affair at Clerkenwell as a judgment for your sin.”
“They seemed to suspect some Irish people, ma’am.”
“Heaven has its own way of punishing evil-doers,” declared the lady, “and
it isn’t for us to question its methods. You cannot stay here any
longer.”
“I must find another situation, I s’pose, ma’am. But I shan’t get such a
good one as this.”
“Deceit,” insisted the other, “is one of the things that must, on no
account, be encouraged. What is your boy like?”
The child, brought from the kitchen, repeated for the benefit of Helen’s
mistress his account of the explosion, a performance that had been well
received downstairs. The lady was impressed.
“A clever boy,” she said. “Would you like me to adopt him, Helen, and
thus leave you free?”
“I’d rather starve than let him go away from me again.”
“Supposing, then,” said the lady, getting over her surprise at this
attitude, “supposing I set you up in a small business of some kind; will
you promise me never to be deceitful again?” Helen gave the required
guarantee, and her mistress put the small boy through a viva-voce
examination; his replies concerning the award meted out to naughty people
fortunately coincided exactly with the lady’s own views.
Helen Rollinson, widow of Ernest Rollinson, and mother of George
Rollinson, saw her name painted over a shop in Southampton Row, with the
words added, on either side of the main inscription, “Newsagent” and
“Tobacconist”; she let the rooms above, giving some personal attendance,
used the apartment at the back of the shop as a living-room whence she
could see when a customer entered, occupied spare moments by making
clothes for George, preparing necessary meals, and telling him to be a
good lad. She slept for about six hours every night, giving the
remaining eighteen to hard work, and to the considerable task of minding
her own business. Mr. Forster carried his Education Act just in time to
enable George to take advantage of it, and the boy was one of the
earliest to pay sixpence a week and become a pupil of the State at a
superior school; in his spare time he delivered newspapers and ran
errands, sometimes going so far as the City and making use of the new
Viaduct at Holborn; he was at first terrified by these important
missions, but overhearing his mother speak of him to a customer as a boy
who knew his way about, he determined to keep his fears to himself, and
to overcome them. Moreover, there was the knowledge that undertakings of
the kind, perilous as they might be, saved expense. Mrs. Rollinson
watched every penny, every halfpenny, and spoke with genuine regret when
disbursements had to be made to the Parcels Delivery Company.
“Throwing away good money!” she declared.
She explained to George, in answer to his question, a theory she held in
regard to the coinage of the United Kingdom, and he embodied these views
in an essay at school the following morning. His teacher, greatly
diverted, read the paper aloud to the class, and the boys followed the
lead, glad of an excuse for boisterous amusement. George flushed, and
kept his head down. It gives some notion of the difficulties experienced
by the State in its early days of keeping school when I mention that
George ranged himself on the side of his parent, and declined to accept
the opinions of educational authorities; the teacher, noting his
attitude, spoke to him later in the playground, and assured him again
that his argument was based upon error. Money, said the teacher, was
manufactured at a place called the Mint situated east of the City; the
gold coins were actual value, whilst the rest were called tokens,
representing a value only by agreement. Notes were made on special
paper, and printed under the supervision of the Bank of England. To
write, as George Rollinson had done, that there were two kinds of money,
one dry and the other slippery, one easy to retain and the other
impossible to keep, was to make an assertion that, in the light of facts,
could not possibly be supported.
“So get that nonsensical idea out of your head, my lad,” advised his
teacher earnestly, “as soon as you possibly can. You have a good deal to
learn yet, remember.”
On most subjects George accepted the instructions of the representatives
of the State, bringing home to Southampton Row items of geographical
information and snips of historical news; his mother nodded approvingly
and hinted that all the particulars had once been learnt by her, but,
owing to pressure of other matters, forgotten. When the boy asked about
his father she constructed for his encouragement, and her own content, an
ideal man, dogged, wise, and industrious, never wasting a moment of
valuable time, always thrifty. Upon George inquiring why, in these
circumstances, they had not been left more comfortably off, she fell back
on her old theory regarding cash, and told him in conclusion that little
boys who did not ask too many questions would find their appropriate
reward in not being told too many lies.
The profits of the business were small, but they were sure. The
newspaper and magazine side increased slightly year by year with nothing
in the nature of a set-back, excepting the occasional defalcation of some
customer with a poor memory, and lightly furnished in the way of luggage.
Mrs. Rollinson, when the lad was of a sufficient age, showed him the
results of the business, and George said they ought to sell letter paper
at the tobacco counter, seeing that the figures there were stationary.
Mrs. Rollinson gave this remark as “George’s latest” to a customer, a
short, clean-shaven man, who patronised the shop for lucifer matches, and
the customer pronounced it good; later, in calling, he mentioned he had
worked it into a burlesque at the Strand Theatre where he was playing,
and that it went fairly well. He added that he had never yet found the
perfect tobacco, and now almost despaired of doing so; described the
different flavours which he desired. George, listening from the shop
parlour, asked permission of his mother to make a few experiments; she
gave her consent, on the understanding that there should be no waste.
The results, tried in the celebrated actor’s pipe, gained emphatic
approval, and George suggested a letter should be written from the
Theatre embodying these compliments and bearing a signature. The letter
was framed, set in the window. Within a week Mrs. Rollinson found
herself compelled to engage the services of an assistant on the tobacco
side, a worthy, well-favoured man who thenceforth for many years, in
accepting his wages on Saturday nights, made a proposal of marriage to
her. Mrs. Rollinson declined, in set form, on the grounds that she
wished to look after George.
“Very well then,” he would say resignedly. “Then I s’pose I must wait.”
On a Saturday when George brought a young lady from High Street,
Marylebone, to the shop, and introduced her to his mother with the
remark, “I want you two to be friends!” Mrs. Rollinson, greatly upset,
perturbed the assistant by giving in reply to the usual question an
unusual answer. He went out of the shop in a dazed condition, and on the
Monday morning a letter came from him, stating that, on reflection, he
decided he was unworthy of the great honour, and he hoped Mrs. Rollinson
would not mind if, instead, he sailed for Canada.
“It’s all for the best!” said Mrs. Rollinson. After going to chapel
twice on the intervening Sunday, she was regarding the possibility of the
engagement of her son with greater calm. “George will have to work
harder, and I’m good for several years yet. We shall rub along all
right. He needn’t get married until he’s thirty. It’s quite fashionable
nowadays for gentlemen to wait until they’re getting on in life.”
She told him that her first criticism of the girl had been made on the
impulse of the moment: she now begged to withdraw the word “minx” and to
substitute a more flattering noun.
“Very glad to hear you say that, mother. She’s a girl with most
wonderful ideas in her head.”
“That doesn’t matter,” replied Mrs. Rollinson tolerantly, “so long as she
leaves them there.”
“What I mean is, extraordinarily ambitious.”
“I’m like that, too,” she remarked. “I’ve set my ’eart on having the
front of the shop done up this spring. Me and her will get on capitally
together. Make your mind quite easy. She can come here every Christmas
day and now and again on Sundays—but not too often—and when eventually
you get married, why, if all goes well, I’ll retire and I’ll leave you
the business. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?”
“Mother,” the lad blurted out, “she wanted it to be a secret for a time,
but I can’t keep it back from you. We’re married already!”
“No, George, my boy. That isn’t true, surely!”
“I take all the responsibility,” he went on, “but she said it was no use
letting the grass grow under our feet.”
“I wish,” said Mrs. Rollinson aside, to the negro figure in the corner,
“that grass was growing over her head!”
This was the final word of a vehement nature that George’s mother used in
regard to her daughter-in-law. When she took some of the furniture, and
rode away on the tail of the van to Chalk Farm, she told the middle-aged
man with the green baize apron that there was nothing like retiring from
business whilst one was still capable of enjoying life: to the lady who
owned the house where the furniture was unloaded she mentioned, in taking
possession of the two rooms on the ground floor, that her only visitors
would be her son and her son’s wife; she hoped they would be in and out
of the place frequently. Mrs. Rollinson gave a short, enthusiastic
description of the bride and remarked that she already looked upon the
girl as her own daughter.
“It’ll be a comfort to me, ma’am,” said the landlady mournfully, “to have
a merry party about the house. The only thing is—I don’t mean anything
personal—but I’ve generally found that when parties were cheerful, they
turned out to be rather bad payers.”
Mrs. Rollinson produced her pass-book; exhibited figures showing the
balance to her credit.
“That’s good enough,” said the other, with something like rapture. She
was leaving the room, but curiosity detained her at the edge of the
carpet. “You must have had some rare strokes of luck, in your day,
ma’am!”
Mrs. Rollinson shook her head resolutely. “It’s all been saved out of
hard work,” she declared.
“I was half hoping,” remarked the landlady, relapsing into gloom, “it was
a case of easy come, easy go!”
The expected callers did not arrive on the first Sunday afternoon,
although tea was prepared, crumpets ready, and Mrs. Rollinson had
rehearsed several amiable speeches to be addressed to her
daughter-in-law. So soon as it became dusk she walked down to
Southampton Row, and from the opposite side of the roadway took a view.
The shop was shuttered, and, alarmed by this—Sunday evening was one of
the best times for receipts—she crossed, and read the notice. Retail
Department Closed, said the bills. Central Office of the English Tobacco
Syndicate. Branches all over the Country. Capital—and here so many
figures (mainly noughts) that Mrs. Rollinson could not reckon them.
“Slippery money,” she said, on the way home. She paid the cabman in
threepenny pieces, and he remarked that she might as well also hand over
the offertory bag.
Young Mrs. George Rollinson delayed her call for nearly two years, and
then she had no occasion to pay a fare; her manner when, on leaving Chalk
Farm, she said to the coachman—
“Home, Watson!”
—Was, in itself, proof of the ease with which cultured habits can be
acquired by those who set their minds to the task. Before going she,
prefacing by the remark that she had called for a quiet chat, spoke at
length and with great rapidity. They were living, George and herself, up
West; Mrs. Rollinson observed that the exact address was not tendered,
and a return call was evidently unnecessary. The present scheme was
going on remarkably well, astonishingly well, amazingly well, and young
Mrs. Rollinson had special cause for gratification in that it originated
with her. For various reasons that her mother-in-law would not
understand, if explained, the present scheme had taken the place of the
old one, and a still newer one was in contemplation. George and his City
friends knew how to manage these affairs to the best advantage.
Unfortunately, it seemed likely the public might exhibit a certain
reticence when the new idea was submitted to them, and investors would
only become eager when they discovered that the shares, or most of them,
had been privately subscribed. Just as many people only wanted to go to
theatres where the notice “House Full” was exhibited, so some did not
apply for shares unless they anticipated difficulty in procuring them.
“And George,” said young Mrs. Rollinson, refastening her fur coat, “is
anxious to show he had not forgotten you, and he asked me to say that,
for the sake of old times, he is quite willing to let you take up—”
“You tell George,” interrupted his mother, “that whenever the time
arrives that he wants to be kept out of the workhouse, he can come along
to me!”
I think I said something in approval of young Mrs. Rollinson’s manner of
giving instructions to her coachman. To be exact, it ought to be
mentioned that there was a distinct trace of asperity in her tones.
Young Mrs. Rollinson said “Home, Watson!” on a good many occasions, and
at various places, before the one evening when she gave to the coachman a
different destination; the two well-matched horses broke down the austere
behaviour of a life-time by winking at each other. George arrived at
Chalk Farm by yellow omnibus, that night, after his mother had gone to
rest in the back room; she came out with no indication of surprise, and
started at once to make up a bed for him on the sofa. He seemed inclined
to retain possession of his silk hat, partly that he might gaze into it
as he gave halting explanations, but his mother wrested this from him,
and ordered him to make himself at home.
“I never heard for certain,” she said, when he had come to an end of the
list of disasters, “but are there any children?”
George shook his head negatively.
“That’s just as well,” she remarked, with cheerfulness. “Now promise me,
George, before we settle anything else: don’t divorce her.”
“I’m willing to give you my word, mother.”
“Good!” she said. “That means the trouble is over. No more Rollinsons
will have to undergo the test. Other people will, but not a Rollinson.
Something seems to tell me that I shall out-live you, and I shall make it
my business to see that you earn honestly every penny you require.”
* * * * *
The single worry that came later was when Merry Hampton won the Derby.
Mrs. Rollinson allowed George one speculation a year in the form of a
half-crown ticket for a sweep-stake; prospects of success appeared
sufficiently remote. George, on the canal bridge in High Street, was
exhibiting to a friend his winnings when the sovereigns slipped through
his fingers, and disappeared in the water below. The friend, taking the
situation with great good-humour, remarked that it looked like a case of
_felo s. d._