AN IMPOSSIBLE FAMILY
Amelia Welwyn, grievously overweighted by a tray containing her father's
breakfast, tacked unsteadily across the floor of the drawing-room at
Russell Square; and, having reached the door of her parent's bedroom,
proceeded to arouse the attention of its occupant by permitting the
teapot to toboggan heavily into one of the panels.
"Don't come in!" said a muffled voice.
"Half-past eleven, Daddy," announced Amelia cheerily. "Your breakfast!"
"In the fender, my child," replied the voice.
Amelia obediently put over her helm, and despite a heavy list to
starboard induced by a sudden shifting of ballast (in the form of the
hot-water jug) ultimately weathered the sofa and deposited the breakfast
tray in the fender, without throwing overboard anything of greater
moment than a piece of buttered toast.
By the fireside, in a very large armchair, sat a small, alert, wizened,
and querulous old lady of eighty-one.
"Cup of tea, Grannie?" said Amelia.
"What's that?" enquired Mrs. Josiah Banks--late of Bedfordshire (or
Cambridgeshire).
"Will you have a cup of tea?" repeated the child in a louder voice.
"No," replied her aged relative; "I won't."
"Very well, then," said Amelia good-temperedly. "Now you two, not so
much of it, if you please!"
This warning was addressed to her younger brother and sister, who,
together with herself, had joined the Welwyn family at a date subsequent
to that upon which we first made its acquaintance. Amelia was twelve
years of age, The Caution five, and The Cure some twenty minutes
younger. At present the latter young lady, in the course of a
life-and-death struggle for the possession of the jettisoned piece of
buttered toast, had become involved in an embrace with her brother, so
involved that it seemed as if no one unfamiliar with the use of
letter-locks could ever unravel them. However, the experienced Amelia
succeeded; and having shaken the skirts of The Cure a little lower and
pulled the knicker-bockers of The Caution a little higher, dumped both
combatants upon the sofa and divided the now hopelessly mangled booty
between them.
"And don't let me catch you at it again," she added magisterially.
"Only Monday morning, and your pinnies no more use than nothing! Come
in!"
At the sight of the figure which appeared in the doorway in response to
this invitation The Caution and The Cure set up a combined howl of
apprehension, only to be quelled by a dole of lump-sugar--hush-money in
the most literal sense of the word--supplied by the resourceful Amelia.
"Come in, Mr. Mehta Ram! What can we do for you this morning?" she
enquired maternally. "Never mind those two"--indicating the quaking
infants on the sofa. "It's their consciences, that's all. You see, I
always threaten to give them to you when they are naughty, and now they
think that you have really come for them. It's all right," she added,
turning reassuringly to the culprits. "Mr. Ram won't eat you this
time."
Benevolent Mr. Mehta Ram beamed upon the chubby buccaneers through his
gold spectacles.
"Believe me, Miss Amelia," he replied, "I could cherish no cannibalistic
designs upon such jolly kids. Is your excellent mother within her
domicile, or has she gone for a tata?" (Mr. Ram prided himself upon his
knowledge of colloquial English.)
"She is out--shopping. Tell me your trouble," said businesslike Amelia.
"I came here," began the Bengalee, "to address your mother in her
offeecial capacity."
"I know," said Amelia swiftly. "It was that kipper you had for
breakfast. I thought it was wearing a worried look while mother was
cooking it. Well, you shan't be charged for it."
Mr. Mehta Ram waved a fat and deprecating hand.
"Far be it from me," he replied, "to reflect upon the culinary ability
of your excellent mother Welwyn. I came about a very different pair of
shoes."
Mr. Ram then proceeded, in the curious blend of Johnsonian English and
street-boy slang which constitutes the vocabulary of that
all-too-precocious linguist, the Babu, with all the forensic earnestness
and technical verbiage of the student who has spent the past six months
grappling with the intricacies of English Law, to bring a weighty
indictment against the gentleman on the second-floor back.
"In brief," he concluded, "Mr. Pumpherston has impounded my
sugar-basin."
"Broken it, you mean?"
"No, Miss Amelia. He has confiscated it--pinched it, in fact.
And"--Mr. Ram swept onward to his peroration, his brown face glistening
with mild indignation--"although I have assured him upon my word of
honour that there will be father and mother of a row if same is not
returned forthwith, he merely projects the sneer of scorn upon my humble
petition."
"Oh, does he?" exclaimed Miss Amelia, with heat. "Mr. Pumpherston has
been enquiring for trouble for a long while now, and this time he is
going to get it. Mother"--as Mrs. Welwyn, humming a cheerful air,
entered the room and began to deposit parcels upon the table, much as a
mountain deposits an avalanche--"here is Mr. Ram says Mr. Pumpherston
has sneaked his sugar-basin and won't give it back."
"What's that, Ducky?" enquired Mrs. Welwyn, breaking off her little
tune. She was a large, still handsome, and most unsuitably attired
matron of about forty-five. Her task (and be it added, her joy) in life
was the support of a rather useless husband, of whom she was
inordinately proud because he happened to have been born a gentleman;
and all the energy and resource of her honest simple nature had been
devoted to the single aim of raising her children to what she considered
his level rather than permit them to remain upon her own. In the case
of the girls she had been singularly successful. Percy was her failure,
but fortunately she regarded him as her greatest triumph. (Providence
is very merciful to mothers in this respect.) And her love had not been
utterly vain, for although her taste in dress was disastrous and her
control of the letter "h" uncertain, her family were devoted to her.
"You ask Mr. Mehta Ram all about it!" replied Amelia darkly.
"The aforesaid Pumpherston," resumed Mr. Ram at once, "has threatened me
with personal violence--to wit, a damn good skelp in the eyeball. I
quote his _ipsissima verba_."
"Oh, _has_ he?" replied Mrs. Welwyn, with decision. "Well that puts the
lid on Pumpherston, anyway. He's behind with his rent as it is; so the
moment our Perce gets home to-night, up goes Perce to the second-floor
back, and out goes my lord Pumpherston! I never could abide Scotchies,
anyhow."
"Martha," enquired a piping but painfully distinct voice from the
fireside, "what does that black 'eathen want in 'ere?"
"All right, Mother," replied Mrs. Welwyn. She turned soothingly to the
Babu. "We'll put things straight for you, Mr. Ram," she said
reassuringly. "You'll get justice in this country, never fear!
Good-morning!"
Mr. Mehta Ram, inarticulate with gratitude, salaamed himself out of the
room, to the manifest relief of The Caution and The Cure. Mrs. Welwyn
followed him onto the landing.
"You'll get your sugar-basin back, double-quick!" she announced in a
loud voice. "That'll frighten Pumpherston," she observed grimly,
re-entering the room and shutting the double doors behind her.
"It's a pity losing a lodger, Mother," said Amelia.
"Yes, dearie, it is," agreed Mrs. Welwyn with a sigh. "But it can't be
helped. I'll tell you what, though. Run after that blackamoor and ask
him if he has n't got a friend wants a room--a nice peaceable creature
like himself. The Museum Reading-Room is full of them, Father says.
Tell him to pick us a good one. Take the children up with you. Father
will be in here for his breakfast in a minute."
As the door closed upon Amelia and her charges, Mrs. Welwyn crossed the
room to her surviving parent's side.
"Well, Mother," she enquired cheerily, arranging the old lady's shawl,
"how goes it to-day? World a bit wrong?"
The genial Mrs. Banks did not answer immediately. Obviously she was
meditating a suitable repartee. Presently it came.
"When is that good-for-nothing 'usband of yours going to get up?" she
enquired.
Mrs. Welwyn flushed red, but patted her cantankerous parent
good-humouredly on the shoulder.
"That's all right, Mother," she said. "You mind your business and I'll
mind mine. Lucius sits up very late at night, working,--long after you
and I have gone to bed,--so he's entitled to a good long lay in the
morning."
"Pack o' nonsense!" observed Mr. Welwyn's mother-in-law. "I'd learn
'im!"
"Good-morning, good people!"
Lucius Welwyn strode into the room with all the buoyancy and
cheerfulness of a successful man of forty. As a matter of fact he was a
failure of fifty-nine, but he still posed to himself with fair success
as a retired man of letters. His role was that of the philosophic
onlooker, who prefers scholarly ease and detachment to the sordid
strivings of a commercial age. In reality he was an idle, shiftless,
slightly dissipated, but thoroughly charming humbug. He was genuinely
attached to his wife, and in his more candid moments readily and
bitterly acknowledged the magnitude and completeness of his debt to her.
He possessed a quick smile and considerable charm of manner; and when he
was attired, not as now in a dressing-gown and slippers, but in the
garments of ceremony, he still looked what he undoubtedly was--a scholar
and gentleman.
"Good-morning, Father. Your breakfast is all ready. Sit down, do, and
take it while it's hot," Mrs. Welwyn besought him.
"Breakfast?" exclaimed Mr. Welwyn with infectious heartiness.
"Capital!" He seated himself before the tray. "A good wife and a good
breakfast--some men are born lucky!"
"Some men," remarked an acid voice, "are born a deal luckier than what
they deserve to be."
Mr. Welwyn, who was sitting with his back to the oracle, did not turn
round.
"That you, Grandma?" he said lightly, pouring out his tea. "You are in
your usual beatific frame of mind, I am glad to note."
"None of your long words with me, Lucius Welwyn!" countered his aged
relative with spirit. "I never 'ad no schooling, but I knows a waster
when I sees 'un."
"Kidneys? Delicious!" remarked Mr. Welwyn, lifting the dish-cover.
"Martha, you spoil me."
This pronouncement received such hearty endorsement from the fireside
that Mrs. Welwyn crossed the room and laid a firm hand upon her
sprightly parent's palsied shoulder.
"Now then, Mother," she said briskly, "you trot across the landing to
your own room. I'm going to turn this one out presently. I've lit a
fire for you."
Mrs. Banks, who knew full well that behind a smiling face her daughter
masked a hopelessly partisan spirit, rose to her infirm feet and
departed, grumbling. At the door she paused to glare malignantly upon
the back of her well-connected son-in-law. But that unworthy favourite
of fortune was helping himself to kidneys.
"Seems to me," remarked Mrs. Welwyn apologetically, as the door closed
with a vicious snap, "that Mother got up on the wrong side of her bed
this morning. You don't mind, do you, Father dear?"
"I? Not in the least," replied Mr. Welwyn with much cheerfulness. "I
find your worthy mother, if anything, a tonic. You are a good soul,
Martha. Sit down and have a cup of tea with me: it must be some time
since you breakfasted. Take mine."
He pushed his brimming cup towards his wife.
"Oh, no, Father!" said Mrs. Welwyn, quite distressed. "I'll get one for
myself."
She rose, and went to the sideboard.
"On consideration," interposed her husband, as if struck by a sudden
idea, "I think--yes, I think--I should prefer a tumbler. I was working
late last night; and possibly--I rather feel--You know what the doctor
said. A man of letters--thank you, dearest. You anticipate every
wish!"
The man of letters helped himself from the decanter and siphon which his
prescient spouse had already laid beside the tray, and attacked the
kidneys with renewed confidence.
"Father," observed Mrs. Welwyn presently, nervously sipping her
second-hand cup of tea, "there's trouble among the lodgers again."
Mr. Welwyn gave her a reproving little glance.
"I think, dearest," he said gently, "that we agreed to call them paying
guests."
"That," retorted Mrs. Welwyn with sudden indignation, "is just what
they're not. Pumpherston has paid nothing for three weeks, and now he is
threatening to murder poor old Mehta Ram."
"In my house?" exclaimed Mr. Welwyn grandly. "Impossible! This must
stop. Where is Percy?"
"Percy," replied matter-of-fact Mrs. Welwyn, "is where you would expect
him to be at this hour, you dear old silly--earning his living at
Cratchett and Raikes's!"
"Talking of Cratchett and Raikes," said Mr. Welwyn, characteristically
forgetting all about Mr. Pumpherston, "is there a letter this morning
from Gandy and Cox?"
"No," said Mrs. Welwyn quickly. "Why?"
"Nothing, nothing," said Mr. Welwyn, rising to look for his
cigarette-case. "They have been rather pressing over their little
account lately. In fact, they have had the presumption to threaten me
with distraint."
"How much was the bill, dear?" enquired Mrs. Welwyn, removing the
breakfast-tray to the sideboard.
"A mere trifle," was the airy reply. "Seven pounds odd, I fancy, for a
case of champagne which I had a year or two ago, when my heart was a
little--you recollect? The doctor--"
"Yes, lovey," said Mrs. Welwyn. "It was an anxious time for all of us.
But"--her brow puckered--"did n't you pay cash for it? I seem to
remember giving you the money."
"Now you mention it," said Mr. Welwyn, lighting a cigarette, "I believe
you did--ah--hand me the money. But I fear I was weak--quixotic, if you
will. I gave it away." He raised a deprecating hand. "No! Please! I
beg! Do not ask me more, dearest. It was one of those private
disbursements for which a man with a weakness for his fellow-creatures
often finds himself made liable. A little nameless charity. It will
appear upon no subscription-list; no public acknowledgment will be made.
But--I have my reward. Do not embarrass me, Martha, by alluding to the
matter again."
Mr. Welwyn, quite affected by the memory of his own generosity, took his
wife tenderly in his arms and kissed her upon the forehead. He then
blew his nose violently, evidently ashamed of his own weakness, and sat
down by the fire with the newspaper.
Mrs. Welwyn knew only too well what the little nameless charity had
been; but, after all, seven pounds odd was a small price to pay for the
affection of such a husband as hers. She accepted the embrace
gratefully, sighed, and said:--
"Very well, dearie. It's a good thing," she added inconsequently, "that
the house is our own and we don't have to bother about rent. Rates are
bad enough. The butcher has been a bit crusty of late; and what with
Pumpherston not paying for his room and Tilly giving up her
blouse-designing, I don't believe there's change for a sovereign in the
house."
Mr. Welwyn arose from his armchair, finished the refreshment contained
in the tumbler (which he had placed conveniently upon the mantel-piece),
and smiled indulgently upon his care-worn helpmeet.
"You women, you women!" he said, shaking his handsome head in playful
reproach. "No breadth of view! No sense of proportion! Martha,
dearest, how often have I begged you never to judge a situation by its
momentary aspect? Cultivate a sense of perspective. Step back--"
Suiting the action to the word, Mr. Welwyn trod heavily upon the
fire-irons in the fender. These resentfully retaliated, the knob of the
shovel springing up and striking him a sharp rap upon the knuckles,
while the tongs nipped him viciously in the ankle.
After the clatter had subsided and Mr. Welwyn had said what many a less
distinguished man would have said under similar circumstances, his
habitual placidity of temper returned, and he resumed his lecture where
it had been interrupted.
"I was about to urge you, Martha," he continued, "to cast your mind
_forward_--forward to the time when you will possess a wealthy
son-in-law."
Mrs. Welwyn, who was endeavouring to remove from the sofa certain traces
of its recent occupancy by the glutinous Caution and the adhesive Cure,
turned suddenly and faced her husband.
"Lucius," she said gravely, "I have a feeling that there is going to be
trouble over this business."
"Over what business?" enquired Mr. Welwyn.
"Over this son-in-law business," said Mrs. Welwyn doggedly. "Mr.
Mainwaring--"
"Richard, dear--Richard!"
"All right--Richard! I don't think Richard will take very kindly to us
when he sees us at home, and he'll have to see us here sometime, you
know. Things look different in Russell Square from what they do at the
Trocadero. And if he sheers off after all--well, it'll break our Tilly's
heart."
At this moment the door burst open, to admit the sisters Welwyn, locked
in an affectionate embrace and dancing a two-step to a whistled
accompaniment. Tilly had returned.