IN WHICH AN HONEST COUPLE WHO NEVER DID ANYONE ANY HARM ARE SEEN ON
THE BRINK OF THE STRUGGLE WITH PROSPERITY
It was the next morning, I think, that Mrs. Wiles entered the room in
a state of high tension and handed me a letter. It came, she said,
after Wiles had left for the Zoo, and would I do her the great favour
of conveying it to him? But, first of all, would I read it and give
my opinion as to whether or not it was a "have"? With these words
she asked permission to sit down, and sank into a chair with her hand
on her heart in something very like collapse. While Naomi fetched a
restorative I opened the letter and read as follows:
"MR. MORDECAI WILES.
"DEAR SIR,--It is our pleasure to inform you that in accordance with
the terms of the will of the late Samuel Wiles of 18 Bonchurch Road,
Melbourne, of which we enclose a copy, you are sole heir to his
property. To what this amounts we cannot at present state, but not
less than £50,000. We beg to enclose a cheque for £500 to meet any
emergencies that may occur, and await your instructions as to our
future action.--We are, yours obediently,
"MORGAN & RICE"
Who was this Mr. Wiles, I asked. Mrs. Wiles said that he was an
uncle of her husband's, as indeed I instinctively knew, for is not
Australia peopled by uncles who do this kind of thing?
"Do you know how much it is?" I asked her. "It's two thousand a
year, without touching the capital at all. What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," she said. "Ask Wiles. It frightens me. We were so
happy, too."
"But you needn't be any less happy," said Naomi.
"I don't know. It frightens me," the poor thing repeated. "It's too
late. Wiles will get so fat."
"Oh no," said Naomi, "we must see to that. We must keep him busy."
"It isn't as if we had children," said Mrs. Wiles. "Then it might be
a good thing. But we're all alone. We've never spent so much as two
pounds a week in our lives. And the little nest-egg we'd been saving
all these years--to buy a house with--it makes that look so foolish!"
The good creature was actually in tears. "But perhaps it's all a
mistake," she added more brightly.
"I don't think so," I said. "This cheque is too real for that, and
the copy of the will, too. Your husband's name is Mordecai, isn't
it?"
"I'm afraid so," she said.
I carried the momentous documents to the New Ape-House, not without
trepidation and misgiving. They were, I could see, the death-warrant
to Wiles as Barbara's keeper; and I felt resentment against fate for
so brutally breaking this bond, apart altogether from other mischief
which might ensue. It was not as if either Wiles or his wife had
imagination or any breadth of view. They were the most ordinary,
simple, faithful creatures, not in the least discontented with their
lot, and not in the least fitted to receive a fortune. They were too
good for it; they had done nothing to deserve such a chastisement. A
hundred a year--that would have been sensible: a fund against
illness, a security for old age, a sanction for certain little extras
now; but two thousand a year was monstrous.
Wiles was just showing out some impatient F.Z.S. when I arrived, and
I watched the transfer of a shilling from hand to hand. Looking the
F.Z.S. over, I doubted if he had more than £1800 a year, and smiled
to myself. Wiles led me in, and for a time I did nothing but caress
Barbara and feed her with grapes.
Then I said, "Mr. Wiles, how would you like to be rich?"
"Rich," he said. "How rich?"
"Well, rich enough to spend as many days as you liked at Lord's or
the Oval?"
"But what about my apes?" he asked.
"I mean so rich that you couldn't very well go on looking after
them," I said.
"I shouldn't like that," he replied.
"But don't you ever want a holiday?"
"Not more than a day or so. I can't trust my mate enough for more
than that."
"But surely if you had to leave the Zoo owing to a fortune you could
get accustomed to it?"
Wiles became suspicious. "May I ask who and what you're getting at?"
he said.
I handed him the letter. He read it and the will several times.
"Well, I'm jiggered," he said at last. "Well, I'm jiggered."
"Your wife asked me to bring it," I told him.
"So I supposed," he said. "And she, what does she think of it all?"
"She's jiggered too," I said.
"Poor old girl," he said. "How much a year do you reckon it comes
to?" he asked.
"About two thousand pounds."
He whistled. "And here have I been looking in a pawnbroker's window
in Camden Town High Street for the past three months, wondering if I
could treat myself to a meerschaum pipe he's got there, at
twelve-and-six, to smoke on Sundays. I can have a bushel of them
now, and there's no fun in it."
I walked back by way of the sea-lions' enclosure to refresh my eyes
with the King Penguin's perfect ecclesiastical tailoring. He was
pacing moodily about as usual, in what one felt to be the interval
between a marriage ceremony and a funeral service. Much better, I
thought, to have left the £2000 a year to him. No harm would then be
done, and what perfect episcopal garden-parties he could give with it!
The Misses Packers' attitude to Mrs. Wiles, Naomi tells me, underwent
an extraordinary change on hearing the news. That they were losing
an excellent and inexpensive assistant they could not forget; and
they overwhelmed her with attentions, led her downstairs with the
tenderest solicitude, and plied her with tea. This was not, I am
convinced, the rather ugly homage of the poor to the rich, but merely
paying success its due. For the Misses Packer belong to that large
branch of the human family which worships success. Mrs. Wiles had
succeeded: she was worth £2000 a year; and they recognized her merit
accordingly. They did not want any of her money or envy her her
position at the top of the tree: they merely lit a votive lamp before
her.
The next day Mrs. Wiles was able to tell us more. Wiles had been
thinking it over and had decided to do nothing until the estate was
wound up and all the money his. He had, however, mentioned the
matter to two or three of his mates in confidence; but this turned
out to be one of the secrets that apparently no one ever pretends to
try to keep, for by night everyone knew of it: Wiles was a
millionaire; and fourteen men that he didn't like first asked him to
drink and then tried to borrow five shillings.
"I shall go on here too," said Mrs. Wiles. "That is, as long as
they'll let me. But they do treat me so ladylike it makes me
nervous, and that Miss Cole wants to find a house for me and
introduce me to some of her friends. The idea! Still, it would be a
nice thing to give up the place and then find the whole affair was a
noax. Oh, and please, Wiles says, would you be so kind as to take
care of this cheque for him--put it in your bank?"
As it happened, it was no hoax, and, circumstances quickly proving
too much for them, the Wiles had to become gentlefolk. The result is
that Wiles has left the Zoo and wears black clothes. These are not
out of respect for the avuncular gander who laid the golden eggs, but
because black clothes signify a holiday, and all life is now a
holiday for him. Mrs. Wiles has left us and wears a hat ten years
too young for her, with cherries. They have moved to a new house in
a quiet street off the Camden Town Road, where they keep a small
servant; but this is a waste of money, for, in the first place, Mrs.
Wiles does everything in the end, and, in the second place, their old
neighbours would gladly club together to pay the girl's wages
themselves, just to be kept informed at first hand of how the
millionaires are going on.
Naomi and I called, by invitation, to take tea with them, and we were
all polite and uncomfortable, and I saw poor Wiles's eyes and
thoughts wandering towards the kitchen, where he could have taken off
his coat and been at his ease. I found that he had spent the
morning, as I expected, at the Zoo, talking to old friends, and in
fact he usually drops in for an hour every day.
"Yes," said his wife, rather acidly, "can't keep away from his
Barbara."
Mrs. Wiles admitted that she had been cleaning up a little;
unoccupied rooms do get that dirty in London. In the afternoon Wiles
reads the paper or takes a walk, and sometimes Mrs. Wiles accompanies
him to a picture palace. In the evening he becomes more normal again
and drops into a public-house and perhaps plays a game of billiards;
but even in these blessed hours, when bed is approaching and another
day dies, things are not the same, for he can no longer frequent his
old haunt, the Cross Keys. He went there for a little while, but had
to give it up, partly on account of chaff, but chiefly because he
found that he was expected to pay for everything for everybody. So
now he spends his evenings in finding new houses of call, where his
history is unknown, in continual fear of an old acquaintance coming
in and giving him away.
"Then wealth isn't an unmixed blessing?" I asked.
"I wouldn't say that, sir, not yet; but it's a terrible change. What
worries me more than anything else--even more than finding how many
friends I've got that I'd never dreamed were friends at all--is the
way that when you have money you're afraid of spending it. When I
had my wages and a little over in tips I knew where I was. Now I
don't know anything. As I've told the missis time and again, it's
going to make a miser of me."
"If you'll take my advice," I said to Wiles, "you will buy a share in
some small business that will give you an interest and an occupation.
You are too young to be doing nothing: you'll go to seed and get ill.
Don't let money injure you: make it a useful servant and friend."
"Yes; but what can I do?" he asked.
"Well, we must make inquiries," I said. "There must be such things
going."
"And if you'll take my advice," said Naomi to Mrs. Wiles, '"you'll
adopt a child; not so small as to be an anxiety, but just big enough
to be a companion and a nice responsibility."
Personally I wish this Australian uncle had been a decent bankrupt,
for his money has done no one any good. The Zoo has lost a capable
keeper; the Misses Packer and ourselves have lost a good servant; and
the Wiles have lost peace of mind and any real reason for existence.