LABORIOUS DAYS
With Gerard's death, Henry began to find Aunt Tipping's too sad a place
to go on living in. It had become haunted; and when new people moved
into Gerard's rooms, it became still more painful for him. It was as
though Gerard had been dispossessed and driven out. So he cast about for
some new shelter; and, one day, chance having taken him to the shipping
end of the city, he came upon some old offices which seemed full of
anxiety to be let. Inquiring of a chatty little housekeeper's wife, he
discovered, away at the echoing top of the building, a big, well-lighted
room, for which she thought the owner would be glad to take ten pounds a
year. That whole storey was deserted. Henry made up his mind at once,
and broke the news to Aunt Tipping that evening. It was the withering of
one of her few rays of poetry, and she struggled to keep him; but when
she saw how it was, the good woman insisted that he should take
something from her towards furnishing. Receiving was nothing like so
blessed as giving for Aunt Tipping. That old desk,--yes, she had bought
it for him,--that he must certainly take, and think of his old aunt
sometimes as he wrote his great books on it; and some bed-linen she
could well afford. She would take no denial.
Angel and Esther were then called in to help him in the purchase of a
carpet, a folding-bed, an old sofa, and a few chairs. A carpenter got to
work on the bookshelves, and in a fortnight's time still another
habitation had been built for the Muse,--a habitation from which she was
not destined to remove again, till she and Angel and Henry all moved
into one house together,--a removal which was, as yet, too far off to be
included in this history.
Ten pounds a year, a folding-bed, and a teapot!--this was Henry's new
formula for the cultivation of literature. He had so far progressed in
his ambitions as to have arrived at the dignity of a garret of his own,
and he liked to pretend that soon he might be romantically fortunate
enough to sit face to face with starvation. He knew, however, that it
would be a starvation mitigated by supplies from three separate,
well-lardered homes. A lad with a sweetheart and a sister, a mother and
an aunt, all in love with him, is not likely to become an authority on
starvation in its severest forms.
A stern law had been passed that Henry's daytime hours were to be as
strictly respected as those of a man of business; yet quite often, about
eleven o'clock in the morning, there would come a heavenly whisper along
the passage and a little knock on the door, soft as a flower tapping
against a window-pane.
"Thank goodness, that's Angel!
"Angel, bless you! How glad I am to see you! I can't get on a bit with
my work this morning."
"Oh, but I haven't come to interrupt you, dear. I sha'n't keep you five
minutes. Only I thought, dear, you'd be so tired of pressed beef and
tinned tongue, and so I thought I'd make a little hot-pot for you. I
bought the things for it as I came along, and it won't take five
minutes, if Mrs. Glass [the housekeeper] will only lend me a basin to
put it in, and bake it for you in her oven. Now, dear, you mustn't--you
know I mustn't stay. See now, I'll just take off my hat and jacket and
run along to Mrs. Glass, to get what I want. I'll be back in a minute.
Well, then, just one--now that's enough; good-bye," and off she
would skip.
If you want to know how fairies look when they are making hot-pot, you
should have seen Angel's absorbed little shining face.
"Now, do be quiet, Henry. I'm busy. Why don't you get on with your work?
I won't speak a word."
"Angel, dear, you might just as well stay and help me to eat it. I
sha'n't do any work to-day, I know for certain. It's one of my
bad days."
"Now, Henry, that's lazy. You mustn't give way like that. You'll make me
wish I hadn't come. It's all my fault."
"No, really, dear, it isn't. I haven't done a stroke all morning--though
I've sat with my pen for two hours. You might stay, Angel, just an
hour or two."
"No, Henry; mother wants me back soon. She's house-cleaning. And
besides, I mustn't. No--no--you see I've nearly finished now--see! Get
me the salt and pepper. There now--that looks nice, doesn't it? Now
aren't I a good little housewife?"
"You would be, if you'd only stay. Do stay, Angel. Really, darling, it
will be all the same if you go. I know I shall do nothing. Look at my
morning's work, and he brought her a sheet of paper containing two lines
and a half of new-born prose, one line and a half of which was
plentifully scratched out. To this argument he added two or three
persuasive embraces.
"It's really true, Henry? Well, of course, I oughtn't; but if you can't
work, of course you can't. And you must have a little rest sometimes, I
know. Well, then, I'll stay; but only till we've finished lunch, you
know, and we must have it early. I won't stay a minute past two o'clock,
do you hear? And now I'll run along with this to Mrs. Glass."
When Angel had gone promptly at three, as likely as not another step
would be heard coming down the passage, and a feminine rustle,
suggesting a fuller foliage of skirts, pause outside the door, then a
sort of brotherly-sisterly knock.
"Esther! Why, you've just missed Angel; what a pity!"
"Well, dear, I only ran up for half-a-minute. I was shopping in town,
and I couldn't resist looking in to see how the poor boy was getting on.
No, dear, I won't take my things off. I must catch the half-past three
boat, and then I'll keep you from your work?"
Esther always said this with a sort of suggestion in her voice that it
was just possible Henry might have found some new way of both keeping
her there and doing his work at the same time; as though she had said,
"I know you cannot possibly work while I am here; but, of course, if you
can, and talking to me all the time won't interfere with it--well,
I'll stay."
"Oh, no, you won't really. To tell the truth, I've done none to-day. I
can't get into the mood."
"So you've been getting Angel to help you. Oh, well, of course, if Angel
can be allowed to interrupt you, I suppose I can too. Well, then, I'll
stay a quarter of an hour."
"But you may as well take your things off, and I'll make a cup of tea,
eh? That'll be cosey, won't it? And then you can read me Mike's last
letter, eh?"
"Oh, he's doing splendidly, dear! I had a lovely letter from him this
morning. Would you really care to hear a bit of it?"
And Esther would proceed to read, picking her way among the endearments
and the diminutives.
"I _am_ glad, dear. Why, if he goes on at this rate, you'll be able to
get married in no time."
"Yes; isn't it splendid, dear? I am so happy! What I'd give to see his
little face for five minutes! Wouldn't you?"
"Rather. Perhaps he'll be able to run up on Bank Holiday."
"I'm afraid not, dear. He speaks of it in his letter, and just hopes for
it; but rather fears they'll have to play at Brighton, or some other
stupid seaside place."
"That's a bother. Yes, dear old Mike! To think of him working away there
all by himself--God bless him! Do you know he's never seen this old
room? It struck me yesterday. It doesn't seem quite warmed till he's
seen it. Wouldn't it be lovely to have him here some night?--one of our
old, long evenings. Well, I suppose it will really come one of these
days. And then we shall be having you married, and going off to London
in clouds of glory, while poor old Henry grubs away down here in Tyre."
"Well, if we do go first, you will not be long after us, dear; and if
only Mike could make a really great hit, why, in five years' time we
might all be quite rich. Won't it be wonderful?"
Then the kettle boiled, and Henry made the tea; and when it had long
since been drunk, Esther began to think it must be five o'clock, and,
horrified to find it a quarter to six, confessed to being ashamed of
herself, and tried to console her conscience by the haste of
her good-bye.
"I'm afraid I've wasted your afternoon," she said; "but we don't often
get a chat nowadays, do we? Good-bye, dear. Go on loving me, won't you?"
After that, Henry would give the day up as a bad job, and begin to
wonder if Ned would be dropping in that evening for a smoke; and as that
was Ned's almost nightly custom about eight o'clock, the chances of
Henry's disappointment were not serious.