portrait on the dressing-table, upon the smiling presentment of the
fatuous-faced, shallow-eyed, dead wife.
THE EXCELLENT JOYS OF YOUTH
"No head without its nimbus of gold-coloured light."
He had that delicately tinted infantine complexion which only
accompanies red hair; his eyes were brightly blue; his features well
chiselled, with the exception of the lips, which were clumsily cut and
loosely held together. He came down to breakfast in a not very
agreeable mood, for he had been drinking for the last week, and this
was the first time he had been thoroughly sober for that period. His
head ached, his tongue was hot and leathery; he kept his hands in his
trousers-pockets because they shook heavily, and he did not want the
lodging-house servant to see.
The pockets were quite empty. He could not tell where the last few
pounds had gone--if he had lost them at that game of poker he
remembered playing before he fell asleep, or if they had been stolen
since. He did not remember, and it would be worse than useless to
inquire. Not a penny was left to him, and he had not a notion where a
penny was to come from--even to pay for the breakfast which he had no
appetite to eat.
With a heavy gloom upon his face, he stood and looked at the meal
spread for him for several minutes before he sat down to table. There
was smoked haddock, and he shook his head at it; scrambled eggs, and
having looked at the dish he hastily covered it from sight. Beneath the
sideboard a few bottles of soda-water were lying. He opened one, and,
there being no glass at hand, poured the contents into his
breakfast-cup, then drank with a thirst which threatened the cup as
well as what it held.
Then he sat down to the table and stared at his reflection in the
teapot.
"God! What a fool I've been," he said. "And what the devil am I to do
now?"
Two or three letters lay beside his plate; he flicked them apart with
his shaking finger. "Bills--bills--bills!" he said. "All bills!"
Unopened, he chucked them one by one into the fire, but stopped at the
last. "A lawyer's fist," he said, regarding the ominously legal-looking
hand-writing. "Someone threatening proceedings again. Let 'em proceed!"
He was about to throw that communication also in the fire, but paused
in the act, and laid it down by his plate again, putting another plate
on the top of it to conceal it from his sight.
He took up the knife, old and worn and sharpened at the point, which
lay by the loaf of bread, and looked at its edge.
"This is how poor old Fleming got out of the scrape," he said. "And
Fleming wasn't in a worse hole than I am."
But he turned the knife upon the bread instead of his own throat, and
having begun with an expression of distaste upon the salt fish, his
appetite arrived with eating, and, that dish disposed of, he attacked
the buttered eggs, and found himself in a fair way to make a good meal.
For, in spite of his intemperate habits, he had an invariably good
appetite--an almost indomitable cheerfulness also. The inability to
take himself and his misfortunes seriously had been at the bottom of
all his failures. With his family history and his temperament he was
foreordained to disaster; but he met it smiling, with the courage which
was more the outcome of indifference than of heroism.
"Which is the way to the workhouse, Polly?" he inquired of the little
lodging-house servant who came to clear the table.
He had filled his pipe and had turned his chair to the fire. His blue
eyes shone as brightly, his red hair was watered as carefully free of
curl, his person was as neat and spruce and daintily cared for as if he
had been the most immaculate of mothers' sons.
Polly, at her first place, and with an unbounded admiration and regard
for the lodger who, if he did make a sight of work splashing about in
his bath, was always free with his shillings and full of his fun,
looked at the young man distrustfully.
"What you got to do wi' th' work'us?" Polly asked resentfully, and
seized the bread under one arm and the remains of the haddock under the
other.
"If folks have no money and don't want to starve, what do they do?" he
asked, puffing at his pipe.
"They work," said Polly, laconically; pushed open the door with her
foot, deposited the dishes in the yard-wide hall beyond, and returned
for the rest of the breakfast-things.
"They work if they're lucky and born poor," he said. "But if they're
like me they can't work, Polly, because they don't know how, and no one
will give them the chance to learn. No. It'll have to be the workhouse,
my good girl."
Upon which Polly snuffled loudly, and her tears fell--splash--upon the
plates she was carrying away. It was not the first time that the
workhouse had been threatened; the dread of her life was that the
threat should be carried into effect. So she cried, and her poor little
red hands shook as she shuffled the plates together.
"Here's a letter," she snuffled.
"Fling it on the fire, Polly."
"'Tain't opened. I 'ont, then. You should ope your letters."
"Open it for me, then."
So the little maid-of-all work opened, and, in obedience to his orders,
she being a sixth-standard scholar, and not stumbling once at a hard
word, read the letter.
And as she read, the young man sat upright in his chair, pulled the
pipe from lips which had fallen open in astonishment, and fixed
unblinking eyes of innocent blue upon the handmaiden.
For in legal phraseology, the sense of which, if not the words, was a
sore stumbling-block to Polly, the letter set forth that by the death
of a certain James Playford, legatee under the will of Mr Daniel
Thrower's uncle, a sum of money had been released which now, according
to the said will, was to be divided between the said uncle's nephews
and nieces. Due deduction having been made for this and that, Mr Daniel
Thrower's share was found to amount to the sum of L98, 17s. 6d., for
which a cheque was herewith enclosed.
"Do you mean to say he's sent the money?" Mr Daniel Thrower demanded,
in the accents of incredulity.
"There ain't no money--not a farden--only a bit o' paper," Polly said,
with disappointment.
Dan seized the cheque from her hand. "All right!" he said; "I shan't go
to that institution we spoke of just yet, Polly. We've got another
chance, my girl."
Truth to say, he had had several in his life, but this seemed to him
the happiest which had ever befallen. After each drunken outburst he
made resolution that it should be the last, and remained a strictly
temperate person till the madness seized him again. The resolution he
made as he sat gazing at the cheque he held in his hand, being the
last, was the one he meant to keep. Years ago an elder brother had gone
out to New South Wales, had bought some land there, and had prospered.
He was not a very sympathetic brother, and had not responded to the
suggestion that the ungain-doing Dan should take himself, his bad
fortune, his unsatisfactory habits, also to New South Wales to settle
down beside him.
Dan was of opinion, however, that, once there, this brother would find
a difficulty in getting rid of him. He thought with longing of that
clean and healthy life, the escape from the slough into which his feet
would always wander while he remained here. The means to escape he now
held in his hand!
"Here I keep on sinking, sinking!" Dan said to himself, illustrating
the process with a movement of the hand which held the cheque.
"Bill--he's as hard as nails, but he'll hold me up. I shall begin over
again. I shall be free of this infernal embroglio. I shall write my
name on a clean page----"
He would not stop to repent; he would look out the first steamer that
sailed; he would pay his debts--they were not, after all, many, for he
had a constitutional objection to cheating people, and always paid when
he could. He would say good-bye to the man for whose friendship's sake
he had come here, and would shake the dust of the miserable little town
where he had played the fool of late from his feet. It was three or
four days, he remembered, since he had seen the friend of whom he
thought; he would have news to take him now! So slipping the letter
which contained the cheque into his pocket, he walked out into the
April sunshine of the little High Street, and betook himself to
Gunton's lodgings.
Gunton was the not altogether satisfactory assistant to the one doctor
in the place. Going thus early, he would catch him before he started on
his rounds.
No need to hurry, Dan! Before the good people of Hayford shall see
again the young doctor flying round on his long legs to visit the
pauper patients, or clattering in Doctor Owen's tall gig over the
cobblestones of the High Street on his way to those invalids of least
consideration entrusted to his care, the last trump shall sound.
He was not in the little sitting-room where Dan and he had smoked so
many pipes together. The visitor was striding across the passage to the
bedroom, also on the ground-floor, when the landlady issued therefrom;
and the landlady was in tears.
"I have kep' these apartments respectable and comf'table, and not a
week unlet, these seventeen year, come Michaelmas," she sobbed. "And
never have I had a death in 'em before."
Dan recoiled before the word. "Death?" he said.
And she repeated the word. "Poor Mr Gunton, he have had one of his
throats, and he was took worse yesterday morning. He kep' askin' for
you, sir, and no one could say where you was; and now he have sent me
to fetch you, whatever happen, and to say as he's a-dyin'!"
"It's one of his jokes," Dan said; but he had grown grey about the
lips, and his mouth fell open.
He pushed open the bedroom door, half expecting to be greeted by a
smothered laugh from Gunton, and a whispered account of the last trick
he'd played the old woman.
But Gunton, poor fellow, who had laughed and played his foolish jests,
and got into mischief industriously all through his short life, had
laid his mirth aside to-day. He had done but indifferently well the few
tasks allotted him, shirking them when he could; the business he had
now on hand was a very serious one, and there was no slipping out of
it. He had to die.
He told his friend so in so many words. "What's o'clock now?" he asked.
"Eleven? By two I shall be dead."
Dan tried not to believe. "I'll go for the doctor--I'll fetch a nurse!"
he said.
The other stayed him with his difficult speech. "Don't waste time. It's
no good," he said. "I've seen men die like this. I know. Owen was here
till ten minutes ago. I told him last night it was all up. You know
what an old ass it is--he wouldn't listen. He listens now. He's wired
for ----" (naming a man locally celebrated in the profession). "He's
driven, himself, to Fakenham for a nurse. I shall be dead before they
get here. I told him so--the old ass! He's wired for my mother--she'll
be too late. You can say I sent my love, Dan----"
All this in a hoarse, broken voice, interrupted by loud and painful
breathing, and now and again by a short, rough cough.
"I didn't know you were seedy, old man! I'd have come at once," Dan
said. "I've been on the spree again, for a day or so. It's the end. I'm
not going to play the fool that fashion any more!"
"The end of my sprees!" poor Gunton said. "We've had one or two
together, Dan. Don't look at me. I ain't pleasant to watch. Sorry. It
won't be for long. Dan--my watch and studs, and a chain I never
wore--they're"--he lifted a cold hand and tried to point to a little
heap of trinkets lying on the drawers at the foot of the bed--"they're
for you. Take them, will you? Take them now."
Dan nodded. "I'll take 'em, thank you, old man," he said, and sobbed
suddenly. "Don't worry, Ted. Don't try to talk, dear old boy."
"I've got to. You know about Kitty. I was going to marry her next week.
I took her away from the shop--made her give up her living. She's
bought things to marry me. She can't pay for them. You--you----"
A struggle here, upon which Dan, in spite of himself, turned his back.
"I know," he said, brokenly. "I'll pay for them. I'll see to her. It'll
be all right, Ted."
"No! My mother," the dying boy said; "tell her. She won't be pleased.
Ask her to give Kitty a hundred pounds from me--with my love.
Promise--promise."
"I promise," Dan said. "Anything--anything, dear old man. I know what
you'll want done--don't, for God's sake, talk any more."
But for another hour of misery, of battling for breath, hideous to
suffer and heart-breaking to witness, he would attempt to talk,
irrationally at times, but now and again with a startling coherence.
His mind ran on that gift of a hundred pounds. He sent message after
message to the little shop-girl for whom, with the senseless
prodigality of such youth, he had proposed to fling away his future.
Again and again he adjured his friend to tell his mother what a good
little girl Kitty was, how she had stuck to him and been a brick.
They said he was a clever fellow in his profession, the long-haired,
long-legged young doctor, with his harum-scarum ways and his ready
laugh. He had made a true diagnosis of his own case. Before doctors and
nurses could be got to him he was dead.
"Don't look at me," was the last he said. "Pull the sheet over my
face--don't look."
And so, with the thoughtfulness for others which had proclaimed him
Gentleman in that inferior society where it had pleased him to move, he
hid his suffering from the man who sat weeping like a woman beside him,
and died.
* * * * *
It was Dan, his face blurred and swollen by crying, his usually
darkened and subdued red hair proclaiming its curly nature in all the
fierceness of its roseate hue--Dan, who at that moment would rather
have been in any other place on earth--who received the bereaved
mother, led her to the door of the death-chamber, and retired in
miserable solitude to await the interview, to avoid which he would
gladly have blown out his brains.
She came to him at last, a long, lean woman who had bent a stubborn
back to many sorrows. A meek, unsubdued woman. The lankiness of limb,
and the lankness of feature and hair, sufficiently pleasing in poor
Ted, stretched forth at his long length yonder, were not such agreeable
characteristics in the mother. Narrow face--narrow nature. In the thin
features, contracted nostrils, close, small mouth, Dan might have read
poor hope for Kitty.
"I have taken his jewellery," she said in her toneless voice. "I
thought it best not to leave it about in a lodging-house. I miss a
ring--a ring I gave him on his last birthday. Can you tell me where it
is?"
She spread the watch, the chain, the sleeve-links, a certain pearl stud
which Dan had noticed once or twice in his shirt when poor Gunton wore
dress clothes, upon the table--all the poor, invaluable trifles which
had lain on the drawers in that pathetic little heap bequeathed to the
dead man's friend. "The ring is missing, you see," she said. She tied
up the articles in a spare white handkerchief and slipped them into the
pocket of her dress.
"Everything of his has become doubly precious to me," she said.
"Perhaps you will be so good as to make inquiries about the ring."
Dan roused himself. Here was his opportunity. "I think the ring----" he
began. "I think he gave the ring to Kitty, you know--the girl he was
engaged to," he got out.
"Engaged?" the lady repeated. "My boy engaged--and without my
knowledge!"
"We don't tell our mothers everything, I'm afraid," Dan said. He made a
ghastly attempt to smile, to get back to his habitual easy manner which
had forsaken him. "'Twouldn't be for our mothers' peace of mind----"
She interrupted him with cold dislike. "I know nothing of you and your
mother," she said. "I know that there was perfect confidence between my
son and me."
It was hard, after that, to tell her the story, but he told it, and saw
her narrow face change from its frozen grieving to a still more frozen
anger. She would not believe, or she affected not to believe, the
story. A girl out of a little country shop to _marry_--her boy!
"You have no right to take away his character so, and he not here to
defend himself!" she said. "He--I perceive that he has consorted with
low company since he has been here; but he is a gentleman--my son, by
birth and education."
"He _was_ a gentleman," Dan said gently. Was--was? Ted _was_! Ted, who
had been so alive, so "in it" in the jovial sense always--was! The word
choked poor Dan, but he stumbled on, and told of the poor fellow's last
charge to him, his last request to his mother.
Sometimes, in his confidential moments, Ted had spoken of this mother
of his. "She is a good woman," he had said; "I suppose she never did,
or said, or thought a wicked thing in her life."
She might be good, but she had now a heart as hard as the nether
millstone. She did not choose to credit the story. She would not do her
dear son's memory such an insult as to believe it. She looked with
suspicion as well as dislike upon the poor friend with the rumpled red
hair, with the fair skin, blurred and mottled, as such fair skins are
wont to be, by his weeping. It was quite possible, she told herself in
her miserable little wisdom, that he had made up the tale for his own
ends. The hundred pounds was for himself, or at least he would share
it. She would not believe; and presently she would hear no more.
"I must now really ask you to leave me alone," she said. "Your good
feeling will show you that I have enough to bear."
"And you refuse to do this last thing poor Ted asked of you?" Dan said
to her.
"I have no proof that he asked it," she answered.
And with that insult ringing in his ears, Dan went.
He pulled the door to upon him with a muttered oath on his lips; but he
was not so enraged as another man would have been in his place. The
"old girl" wasn't behaving well; but in Dan's experience, so many
people did not behave well; and as it happened, the thing could be put
right. If it had been yesterday, how helpless he would have been in the
emergency! But old Playford's death had come just in the nick of time.
As for himself and his chance--his last chance--well! He looked across
at that other door behind which Ted lay. Ted and he had stuck together
through ill report and good, had helped each other out of many a
scrape, had had such good times!
Dan looked for a moment at the closed door, then stepped across the
yard of matting and opened it.
Many a time he had run in without waiting for admission to his friend's
lodgings, had pushed open the door to call a word to the young doctor,
already gone to bed or not yet got up, perhaps. So, once more he opened
the door far enough to admit his red head, and looked in. Ted was dead,
he knew; but it takes time to reconcile us to the fact that the dead
are also deaf, senseless, past grieving or comfort.
"It's all right, old man; don't you worry. I'll see to it," Dan said.
CARES OF A CURATE
"November 6th, 1901.
"... You were with me much down at H---- in the spring, and saw many of
the ins and outs of a certain affair then going on in which I was
personally interested, and which took up a large portion of my time;
and I think I owe it to you, Charles, to let you know how to all that
foolishness there came a finish. This 'excellent bachelor' is not to be
spoilt by matrimony. She wouldn't have me. And so on, and so on. I
spare you all particulars, and you see that I am alive to tell the
tale. It made things a little difficult at H----. I got away as soon as
I could and met with another curacy in this place, and I write to you
on the evening of my arrival. It looks a cheerful, pretty little spot,
but I haven't shaken down yet, and thoughts of H----, and of last May
when you were with me, keep turning up in my mind to-night.
"My vicar seems all right. I thought it very decent of him to meet me
himself at the station. He apologised for having insisted on an answer
to his written question--was I a confirmed bachelor? The ladies of the
parish were in favour of a celibate curate, he said, and he himself did
not want to be bothered by a man who would be getting married directly,
and going away. I told him there would not be any fear of misdemeanour
of that kind with me.
"He brought me on here--well no, he didn't, that was what I wished him
to do. He took me to the vicarage and gave me tea. His daughter gave
it, rather. You'd like the daughter. Not very young, and not pretending
to be; filled with good sense, a practical, companionable sort of body.
She, too, was good enough to approve my estate of confirmed
bachelorhood. She said they had found things work so much pleasanter on
these lines. The last three of her father's curates had been devoted to
the single life. I asked, for the sake of conversation, what had become
of them, and she told me, without the change of a muscle of her face,
that they had married. The vicar awoke to the subject of our
conversation here, and said that they had married his three other
daughters.
"'Jessica is the only one left me now,' he said.
"'Jessica must always be left or what will become of you?' the sensible
young woman said.
"A great many women would have felt it a little awkward, but she was
quite unembarrassed. She very kindly put on her hat to show me the way
to my rooms. Even came in, and sat talking for an hour. She said quite
naturally that the best thing a woman got out of advancing years was
the possibility of making of a man a friend. She is thirty-five, and
isn't ashamed of the fact. Altogether a refreshing woman.
"My rooms are not like those at H----. Do you remember that evening in
May when your sister had been on the river with the Hysopps, and she
and Tom and the mother came in, and they brought Mary? The moon was on
the water, and we would not have in the lamps, but sat and talked in
that light. Well, there's no river here, and the moon doesn't shine,
and there are one or two other things missing! But Mrs Bust, my
landlady--what a name!--appears a decent sort, and to judge by my
supper to-night, an excellent cook.
"By the way, every available jug and jar and glass is filled with
chrysanthemums. No less than seven ladies, whose names she gave me, had
brought up bunches during the day, Mrs Bust said.
"This really looks extremely kind of the people. I thought it such a
pretty way of welcoming a stranger....
* * * * *
"26_th November_.
"I'm not in the least offended. Why should I be? I know, as you say,
that lookers-on see most of the game, and I am sure that you are
perfectly genuine in your advice. But I have had enough, thank you. It
will last me my life. Besides, you are mistaken--she wouldn't. A girl
like that with four hundred a year--I always knew the money was a
bar--why should she? I've got no illusions about myself, as a rule. I
was a fool ever to think it possible. Thank you--but don't say any more
about it. I ask it as a favour. I have rolled a stone against that
door, you understand. 'Want but a few things and complain of nothing'
shall be my motto; and although at a certain time of my life I wanted a
good deal, at least I won't complain.
"If only there were fewer women in the world! Fewer in B----, perhaps,
would answer my purpose. The fact of my being a confirmed bachelor
makes them feel safe with me, I suppose, but the fact is I can't stir
for them, Charles; I stifle with them. I wish you'd run down and take
some of the pressure off. I wish a few other good fellows would come
and rescue me. Her mother said that Mary (the forbidden topic!) was not
suited for a clergyman's wife, that she hated useful work. Perhaps that
was why I liked her so much. She never bored me. These women--!
"They are as kind as angels. I'm going to run my pen through the above.
"I've got in a piano--you know my weakness for strumming? My landlady's
daughter shares that weakness. I hear the piano begin before I reach
the garden gate, I hear it shut with a bang as I come in at the door.
Waltzes, played very quick, and galops with the loud pedal down and an
impromptu bass. Her mother suggested to me that Cissy should come in
and play to me in the evenings sometimes. I did not exactly jump at the
offer, and Mrs Bust, to remove a possible objection in my mind,
explained that of course she had not intended to leave her daughter
_alone_ with me; she herself could bring her sewing and chaperon her,
she said.
"I am beginning to dread my meals because this good woman waits on me.
I have begged to be allowed to pour out my own glass of beer and to
reach my own salt-cellar. No use.