OF LONDON BUILDERS, AND THEIR GREAT SKILL. OF THE HUMILIATING
POSITION OF A SHAMEFACED BAT. HOW MR. BARTLETT MADE ALL GOOD. A
PEEP INTO MRS. PRICHARD'S MIND, LEFT ALONE WITH HER PAST. MR.
BARTLETT'S TRUCK, AND DAVE WARDLE'S ANNEXATION OF IT. MRS.
TAPPING'S IMPRESSIONABILITY. AN ITALIAN MUSICIAN'S MONKEY. A CLEAN
FINISH. THE BULL AND THE DUCKPOND. OF MRS. PRICHARD'S JEALOUSY OF
MRS. MARROWBONE. CANON LAW. HOW DAVE DESCRIBED HER RIVAL. HER
SISTER PHOEBE. BUT--WHY DAVERILL, OF ALL NAMES IN THE WORLD?
FOURPENNYWORTH OF CRUMPETS
If you have ever given attention to buildings in the course of erection
in London, you must have been struck with their marvellous stability.
The mere fact that they should remain standing for five minutes after
the removal of the scaffold must have seemed to you to reflect credit on
the skill of the builder; but that they should do so for a
lifetime--even for a century!--a thing absolutely incredible. Especially
you must have been impressed by the nine-inch wall, in which every other
course at least consists of bats and closures. You will have marvelled
that so large a percentage of bricks can appear to have been delivered
broken; but this you would have been able to account for had you watched
the builder at work, noting his vicious practice of halving a sound
brick whenever he wants a bat. It is an instinct, deep-rooted in
bricklayers, against which unprofessional remonstrance is useless--an
instinct that he fights against with difficulty whenever popular
prejudice calls for full bricks on the face. So when the wall is not to
be rendered in compo or plaster, he just shoves a few in, on the courses
of stretchers, leaving every course of headers to a lifetime of
effrontery. What does it matter to him? But it must be most painful to a
conscientious bat to be taken for a full brick by every passer-by, and
to be unable to contradict it.
Now the real reason why the top wall of No. 7, Sapps Court was bulging
was one that never could surprise anyone conversant to this extent with
nine-inch walls. For there is a weakest point in every such wall, where
the plate is laid to receive the joists, or jystes; which may be
pronounced either way, but should always be nine-inch. For if they are
six-inch you have to shove 'em in nearer together, and that weakens
your wall, put it how you may. You work it out and see if it don't come
out so. So said the builder, Mr. Bartlett, at No. 7, Sapps Court, when
having laid bare the ends of the top-floor joists in Mrs. Prichard's
front attic it turned out just like he said it would--six-inch jystes
with no hold to 'em, and onto that all perished at the ends! Why ever
they couldn't go to a new floor when they done the new roof Mr. Bartlett
could not conceive. They had not, and what was worse they had carried up
the wall on the top of the old brickwork, adding to the dead weight; and
it only fit to pull down, as you might say.
However, the weather was fine and warm all the time Mr. Bartlett rebuilt
two foot of wall by sections; which he did careful, a bit at a time. And
all along, till they took away the scaffolding and made good them two or
three pudlock-holes off of a ladder, they was no annoyance at all to
Mrs. Prichard, nor yet to Mrs. Burr, excepting a little of that sort of
flaviour that goes with old brickwork, and a little of another that
comes with new, and a bit of plasterers' work inside to make good.
Testimony was current in and about the house to this effect, and may be
given broadly in the terms in which it reached Uncle Moses. His comment
was that the building trade was a bad lot, mostly; you had only to take
your eye off it half a minute, and it was round at the nearest bar
trying the four-half. Mr. Jerry's experience had been the same.
Mrs. Burr was out all day, most of the time; so it didn't matter to her.
But it was another thing for the old woman, sometimes alone for hours
together; alone with her past. At such times her sleeping or waking
dreams mixed with the talk of the bricklayers outside, or the sound of a
piano from one of the superior houses that back-wall screened the Court
from--though they had no call to give theirselves airs that the Court
could see--a piano on which talent was playing scales with both hands,
but which wanted tuning. Old Mrs. Prichard was not sensitive about a
little discord now and again. As she sat there alone, knitting worsteds
or dozing, it brought back old times to her, before her troubles began.
She and her sister could both play easy tunes, such as the "Harmonious
Blacksmith" and the "Evening Hymn," on the square piano she still
remembered so well at the Mill. And this modern piano--heard through
open windows in the warm summer air, and mixing with the
indistinguishable sounds of distant traffic--had something of the effect
of that instrument of seventy years ago, breaking the steady monotone of
rushing waters under the wheel that scarcely ever paused, except on
Sunday. What had become of the old square piano she and Phoebe learned
to play scales on? What becomes of all the old furnishings of the rooms
of our childhood? Did any man ever identify the bed he slept in, the
table he ate at, half a century ago, in the chance-medley of
second-hand--third-hand--furniture his father's insolvency or his own
consigned it to? Would she know the old square piano again now, with all
its resonances dead--a poor, faint jargon only in some few scattered
wires, far apart? Yes--she would know it among a hundred, by the inlaid
bay-leaves on the lid that you could lift up to look inside. But that
was accounted lawless, and forbidden by authority.
She dreamed herself back into the old time, and could see it all. The
sound of the piano became mixed, as she sat half dozing, with the smell
of the lilies of the valley which--according to a pleasing fiction of
Dolly Wardle--that little person's doll had brought upstairs for her,
keeping wide awake until she see 'em safe on the table in a mug. But the
sound and the smell were of the essence of the mill, and were sweet to
the old heart that was dying slowly down--would soon die outright. Both
merged in a real dream with her sister's voice in it, saying
inexplicably: "In the pocket of your shot silk, dear." Then she woke
with a start, sorry to lose the dream; specially annoyed that she had
not heard what the carman--outside with her father--had begun to say
about the thing Phoebe was speaking of. She forgot what that was, and it
was very stupid of her.
That was Mr. Bartlett outside, laying bricks; not the carman at all.
What was that he was saying?
"B'longed to a Punch's show, he did. Couldn't stand it no longer, he
couldn't. The tune it got on his narves, it did! If it hadn't 'a been
for a sort o' reel ease he got takin' of it quick and slow--like the
Hoarperer--he'd have gave in afore; so there was no pretence. It's all
werry fine to say temp'ry insanity, but I tell you it's the contrairy
when a beggar comes to his senses and drownds hisself. Wot'd the Pope do
if he had to play the same tune over and over and over and over?...
Mortar, John! And 'and me up a nice clean cutter. That's your quorlity,
my son." And the Court rang musically to the destruction of a good
brick.
John--who was only Mr. Bartlett's son for purposes of rhetoric--slapped
his cold unwholesome mortar-pudding with a spade; and ceded an
instalment, presumably. Then his voice came: "Wot didn't he start on a
new toon for, for a wariation?"
Mr. Bartlett was doing something very nice and exact with the
three-quarter he had just evolved, so his reply came in fragments as
from a mind preoccupied. "Tried it on he had--that game--more times
than once.... But the boys they took it up, and aimed stones.... And the
public kep' its money in its pocket--not to encourage noo Frenchified
notions--not like when they was a boy. So the poor beggar had to jump in
off of the end of Southend Pier, and go out with the tide." He added, as
essential, that Southend Pier was better than two mile long; so there
was water to drownd a man when the tide was in.
The attention of very old people may be caught by a familiar word,
though such talk as this ripples by unheeded. The sad tale of the
Punch's showman--the exoteric one, evidently--roused no response in the
mind of old Mrs. Prichard, until it ended with the tragedy at Southend.
The name brought back that terrible early experience of the sailing of
the convict-ship--of her despairing effort at a farewell to be somehow
heard or seen by the man whom she almost thought of as in a grave,
buried alive! She was back again in the boat in the Medway, keeping the
black spot ahead in view--the accursed galley that was bearing away her
life, her very life; the man no sin could change from what he was to
her; the treasure of her being. She could hear again the monotonous beat
of her rowers' pair of oars, ill-matched against the four sweeps of the
convicts, ever gaining--gaining....
Surely she would be too late for that last chance, that seemed to her
the one thing left to live for. And then the upspringing of that blessed
breeze off the land that saved it for her. She could recall her terror
lest the flagging of their speed for the hoisting of the sail should
undo them; the reassuring voice of a hopeful boatman--"You be easy,
missis; we'll catch 'em up!"--the less confident one of his mate--"Have
a try at it, anyhow!" Then her joy when the sail filled and the plashing
of her way spoke Hope beneath her bulwark as she caught the wind. Then
her dread that the Devil's craft ahead would make sail too, and
overreach them after all, and the blessing in her heart for her hopeful
oarsman, whose view was that the officer in charge would not spare his
convicts any work he could inflict. "He'll see to it they arn their
breaffastis, missis. _He_ ain't going to unlock their wristis off of the
oars for to catch a ha'porth o' blow. You may put your money on him for
that." And then the sweet ship upon the water, and her last sight of the
man she loved as he was dragged aboard into the Hell within--scarcely a
man now--only "213 M"!
Then the long hours that followed, there in the open boat beneath the
sun, whose setting found her still gazing in her dumb despair on what
was to be his floating home for months. Such a home! Scraps of her own
men's talk were with her still--the names of passing craft--the
discontent in the fleet--the names of landmarks on either coast. Among
these Southend--the word that caught her ear and set her a-thinking. But
there was no pier two miles long there then. She was sure of that.
What was it Mr. Bartlett was talking about now? A grievance this time!
But grievances are the breath of life to the Human Race. The source of
this one seemed to be Sapps proprietor, who was responsible for the
restrictions on Mr. Bartlett's enthusiasm, which might else have pulled
the house down and rebuilt it. "Wot couldn't he do like I told him
for?"--thus ran the indictment--"Goard A'mighty don't know, nor yet
anybody else! Why--_he_ don't know, hisself! I says to him, I says, just
you clear out them lodgers, I says, and give me the run of the premises,
I says, and it shan't cost you a fi'-pun note more in the end, I says.
Then if he don't go and tie me down to a price for to make good front
wall and all dy-lapidations. And onlest he says wot he means by good,
who's to know?... Mortar, John!" John supplied mortar with a slamp--a
sound like the fall of a pasty Titan on loose boards. The grievance was
resumed, but with a consolation. "Got 'im there, accordin' as I think of
it! Wot's his idear of _good?_--that's wot _I_ want to know. Things is
as you see 'em...." Mr. Bartlett would have said the _esse_ of things
was _percipi,_ had he been a Philosopher, and would have felt as if he
knew something. Not being one, he subsided--with truisms--into silence,
content with the weakness of Sapps owner's entrenchments.
Mr. Bartlett completed his contract, according to his interpretation of
the word "good"; and it seems to have passed muster, and been settled
for on the nail. Which meant, in this case, as soon as a surveyor had
condemned it on inspection, and accepted a guinea from Mr. Bartlett to
overlook its shortcomings; two operations which, taken jointly,
constituted a survey, and were paid for on another nail later. The new
bit of brickwork didn't look any so bad, to the eye of impartiality, now
it was pointed up; only it would have looked a lot better--mind you!--if
Mr. Bartlett had been allowed to do a bit more pointing up on the
surrounding brickwork afore he struck his scaffold. But Sapps landlord
was a narrer-minded party--a Conservative party--who wouldn't go to a
sixpence more than he was drove, though an economy in the long-run. The
remarks of the Court and its friends are embodied in these statements,
made after Mr. Bartlett had got his traps away on a truck, which
couldn't come down the Court by reason of the jam. It was, however, a
source of satisfaction to Dave Wardle, whose friends climbed into it
while he sat on the handle, outweighing him and lifting him into the
air. Only, of course, this joy lasted no longer than till they started
loading of it up.
It lasted long enough, for all that, to give quite a turn to Mrs.
Tapping, whom you may remember as a witness of Dave's accident--the bad
one--nine months ago. Ever since then--if Mrs. Riley, to whom she
addressed her remarks, would believe her--Mrs. Tapping's heart had been
in her mouth whenever she had lighted her eye on young children
a-playing in the gutters. As children were plentiful, and preferred
playing wherever the chances of being run over seemed greatest, this
must have been a tax on Mrs. Tapping's constitution. She had, however,
borne up wonderfully, showing no sign of loss of flesh; nor could her
flowing hair have been thinned--to judge by the tubular curls that
flanked her brows, which were neither blinkers nor cornucopias
precisely; but which, opened like a scroll, would have resembled the
one; and, spirally prolonged, the other. It was the careful culture of
these which distracted the nose of Mrs. Tapping's _monde_, preoccupied
by a flavour of chandled tallow, to a halo of pomatum. Mrs. Riley was
also unchanged; she, however, had no alarming cardiac symptoms to
record.
But as to that turn Dave Wardle giv' Mrs. Tapping. It really sent your
flesh through your bones, all on edge like, to see a child fly up in the
air like that. So she testified, embellishing her other physiological
experience with a new horror unknown to Pathologists. Mrs. Riley, less
impressionable, kept an even mind in view of the natural invulnerability
of childhood and the special guardianship of Divine Omnipotence. If
these two between them could not secure small boys of seven or eight
from disaster, what could? The unbiassed observer--if he had been
passing at the time--might have thought that Dave's chubby but vigorous
handgrip and his legs curled tight round the truck-handle were the
immediate and visible reasons why he was not shot across the truck into
space. Anyhow, he held on quite tight, shouting loudly the next item of
the programme--"Now all the other boys to jump out when oy comes to
free. One, two, _free_!" In view of the risk of broken bones the other
boys were prompt, and Dave came down triumphantly. Mrs. Riley's
confidence had been well founded.
"Ye'll always be too thinder-harruted about the young spalpeens, me
dyurr," she said. "Thrust them to kape their skins safe! Was not me son
Phalim all as bad or wurruss. And now to say his family of childher!"
Mrs. Tapping perceived her opportunity, and jumped at it. "That is the
truth, ma'am, what you say, and calls to mind the very words my poor
husband used frequent. So frequent, you might say, that as often as not
they was never out of his mouth. 'Mary Ann Tapping, you are too
tender-hearted for to carry on at all; bein', as we are, subjick.' And I
says back to him: 'Tapping'--I says--'no more than my duty as a
Christian woman should. Read your Bible and you will find,' I says. And
Tapping he would say:--'Right you are, Mary Ann, and viewin' all things
as a Gospel dispensation. But what I look at, Mary Ann'--he says--'is
the effect on your system. You are that 'igh-strung and delicate
organized that what is no account to an 'arder fibre tells. So bear in
mind what I say, Mary Ann Tapping'--he says--'and crost across the way
like the Good Samaritan, keepin' in view that nowadays whatever we are
we are no longer Heathens, and cases receive attention from properly
constitooted Authorities, or are took in at the Infirmary.' Referring,
Mrs. Riley, ma'am, to an Italian organ-boy bit by his own monkey, which
though small was vicious, and open to suspicion of poison...." Mrs.
Tapping dwelt upon her past experience and her meritorious attitude in
trying circumstances, for some time. As, in this instance, she had
offered refreshment to the victim, which had been requisitioned by his
monkey, who escaped and gave way to his appetite on the top of a
street-lamp, but was recaptured when the lamplighter came with his
ladder.
"Shure there'll be nothing lift of the barrow soon barring the bare
fragmints of it," said Mrs. Riley, who had been giving more attention to
the boys and the truck than to the Italian and the monkey. And really
the repetition of the pleasing performance with the handle pointed to
gradual disintegration of Mr. Bartlett's property.
However, salvage was at hand. A herald of Mr. Bartlett himself, or of
his representatives, protruded slowly from Sapps archway, announcing
that his scaffold-poles were going back to the sphere from which they
had emanated on hire. It came slowly, and gave a margin for a stampede
of Dave and his accomplices, leaving the truck very much aslant with the
handle in the air; whereas we all know that a respectable hand-barrer,
that has trusted its owner out of sight, awaits his return with the
quiet confidence of horizontality; or at least with the handle on the
ground. Mr. Bartlett's comment was that nowadays it warn't safe to take
one's eyes off of anything for half-a-quarter of a minute, and there
would have to be something done about it. He who analyses this remark
may find it hard to account for its having been so intelligible at first
hearing.
But Mrs. Tapping and Mrs. Riley--who were present--were not analytical,
and when Mr. Bartlett inquired suspiciously if any of them boys belonged
to either of you ladies, one of the latter replied with a
counter-inquiry:--"What harrum have the young boys done ye, thin,
misther? Shure it's been a playzin' little enjoyment forr thim afther
school-hours!" Which revealed the worst part of Mr. Bartlett's character
and his satellite John's, a sullen spirit of revenge, more marked
perhaps in the man than in the master; for while the former merely
referred to the fact that he would know them again if he saw them, and
would then give them something to recollect him by, the latter said he
would half-skin some of 'em alive if he could just lay hands on 'em. But
the subject dropped, and Mr. Bartlett loaded up his truck and departed.
And was presently in collision with the authorities for leaving it
standing outside the Wheatsheaf, while he and John consumed a
half-a-pint in at the bar.
When the coast was quite clear, the offenders felt their way back, not
disguising their satisfaction at their transgression. Mrs. Riley seemed
to think that she ought to express the feeling the Bench would have had,
had it been present. For she said: "You'll be laying yoursilves open to
pinalties, me boys, if ye don't kape your hands off other payple's
thrucks, and things that don't consurrun ye. So lave thim be, and attind
to your schooling, till you're riddy for bid." Dave's blue eyes dwelt
doubtfully on the speaker, expressing their owner's uncertainty whether
she was in earnest or not. Indeed, her sympathy with the offenders
disqualified her for judicial impressiveness. Anyhow, Dave remained
unimpressed, to judge by his voice as he vanished down the Court to
narrate this pleasant experience to Uncle Moses. It was on Saturday
afternoon that this took place. Have you ever noticed the strange
fatality which winds up all building jobs on Saturday? Only not _this_
Saturday--always next Saturday. It is called by some "making a clean
finish."
Old Mrs. Prichard lent herself to the fiction that she would rejoice
when the builders had made this clean finish. But she only did so to
meet expectation half-way. She had no such eagerness for a quiet Sunday
as was imputed to her. Very old people, with hearing at a low ebb, are
often like this. The old lady during the ten days Mr. Bartlett had
contrived to extend his job over--for his contract left all question of
extras open--had become accustomed to the sound of the men outside, and
was sorry when they died away in the distance, after breeding dissension
with poles in the middle distance; that is to say, the Court below. She
had felt alive to the proximity of human creatures; for Mr. Bartlett
and John still came under that designation, though builders by trade. If
it had not been Saturday, with a prospect of Dave and Dolly Wardle when
they had done their dinners, she would have had no alleviation in view,
and would have had to divide the time between knitting and dozing till
Mrs. Burr came in--as she might or might not--and tea eventuated: the
vital moment of her day.
However, this was Saturday, and Dave and Dolly came up in full force as
the afternoon mellowed; and Aunt M'riar accompanied them, and Mrs. Burr
she got back early off her job, and there was fourpennyworth of
crumpets. Only that was three-quarters of an hour later.
But Dave was eloquent about his adventure with the truck, judging the
old lady of over eighty quite a fit and qualified person to sympathize
with the raptures of sitting on a handle, and being jerked violently
into the air by a counterpoise of confederates. And no doubt she was;
but not to the extent imputed to her by Dave, of a great sense of
privation from inability to go through the experience herself.
Nevertheless there was that in his blue eyes, and the disjointed
rapidity of his exposition of his own satisfaction, that could bridge
for her the gulf of two-thirds of a century between the sad old now--the
vanishing time--and the merry _then_ of a growing life, and all the
wonder of the things to be. The dim illumination of her smile spread a
little to her eyes as she made believe to enter into the glorious
details of the exploit; though indeed she was far from clear about many
of them. And as for Dave, no suspicion crossed his mind that the old
lady's professions of regret were feigned. He condemned Aunt M'riar's
attitude, as that of an interloper between two kindred souls.
"There, child, that'll do for about Mr. Bartlett's truct." So the good
woman had said, showing her lack of _geist_--her Philistinism. "Now you
go and play at The Hospital with Dolly, and don't make no more noise
than you can help." This referred to a game very popular with the
children since Dave's experience as a patient. It promised soon to be
the only record of his injuries, as witness his gymnastics of this
morning.
But he was getting to be such a big boy now--seven, last birthday--that
playing at games was becoming a mere concession to Dolly's tender youth.
Old Mrs. Prichard's thin soprano had an appeal to this effect in it--on
Dave's behalf--as she said: "Oh, but the dear child may tell me, please,
all about the truck and some more things, too, before he goes to play
with Dolly. He has always such a many things to tell, has this little
man! Hasn't he now, Mrs. Wardle?"
Aunt M'riar--good woman as she was--had a vice. She always would improve
occasions. This time she must needs say:--"There, Davy, now! Hear what
Mrs. Prichard says--so kind! You tell Mrs. Prichard all about Mrs.
Marrowbone and the bull in the duckpond. You tell her!"
Dave, with absolute belief in the boon he was conferring on his
venerable hearer, started at once on a complicated statement, as one who
accepted the instruction in the spirit in which it was given. But first
he had to correct a misapprehension. "The bool wasn't in the duckpong.
The bool was in Farmer Jones's field, and the field was in the duckpong
on the other side. And the dusk was in the pong where there wasn't no
green." Evidently an oasis of black juice in the weed, which ducks
enjoy. Dave thought no explanation necessary, and went on:--"Then Farmer
Jones he was a horseback, and he rodid acrost the field, he did. And he
undooed the gate with his whip to go froo, and it stumbled and let the
bool froo, and Farmer Jones he rodid off to get the boy that
understoodid the bool. He fetched him back behind his saddle, he did.
And then the boy he got the bool's nose under control, and leaded him
back easy, and they shet to the gate." One or two words--"control," for
instance--treasured as essential and conscientiously repeated, gave Dave
some trouble; but he got through them triumphantly.
"Is that all the story, Dave?" said Mrs. Prichard, who was affecting
deep interest; although it was by now painfully evident that Dave had
involved himself in a narrative without much plot. He nodded decisively
to convey that it was substantially complete, but added to round it
off:--"Mr. Marrowbone the Smith from Crincham he come next day and
mended up the gate, only the bool he was tied to a post, and the boy
whistled him a tune, or he would have tostid Mr. Marrowbone the Smith."
Said Aunt M'riar irrelevantly:--"What was the tune he whistled, Dave?
You tell Mrs. Prichard what tune it was he whistled!" To which Dave
answered with reserve:--"A long tune." Probably the whistler's stock was
limited, and he repeated the piece, whatever it was, _da capo ad
libitum_. This legend--the thin plot of Dave's story--will not strike
some who have the misfortune to own bulls as strange. In some parts of
the country boys are always requisitioned to attend on bulls, who
especially hate men, perhaps resenting their monopoly of the term
_manhood_.
This conversation would scarcely have called for record but for what it
led to.
Old Mrs. Prichard, like Aunt M'riar, had a vice. It was jealousy. Her
eighty years' experience of a bitter world had left her--for all that
she would sit quiet for hours and say never a word--still longing for
the music of the tide that had gone out for her for ever. The love of
this little man--which had not yet learned its value, and was at the
service of age and youth alike--was to her even as a return of the
sea-waves to some unhappy mollusc left stranded to dry at leisure in the
sun. But her heart was in a certain sense athirst for the monopoly of
his blue eyes. She did not grudge him to any legitimate claimant--to
Uncle Mo or to Aunt M'riar, nor even to Mrs. Burr; though that good
woman scarcely challenged jealousy. Indeed, Mrs. Burr regarded Dave and
Dolly as mere cake-consumers--a public hungering for sweet-stuffs, and
only to be bought off by occasional concessions. It was otherwise with
unknown objects of Dave's affection, whose claims on him resembled Mrs.
Prichard's own. Especially the old grandmother at the Convalescent Home,
or whatever it was, where the child had recovered from his terrible
accident. She grudged old Mrs. Marrowbone her place in Dave's
affections, and naturally lost no opportunity of probing into and
analysing them.
Said the old lady to Dave, when the bull was disposed of: "Was Mr.
Marrowbone the Smith old Mrs. Marrowbone's grandson?" Dave shook his
head rather solemnly and regretfully. It is always pleasanter to say
_yes_ than _no_; but in this case Truth was compulsory. "He wasn't
_anyfink_ of Granny Marrowbone's. No, he wasn't!" said he, and continued
shaking his head to rub the fact in.
"Now you're making of it up, Dave," said Aunt M'riar. "You be a good
little boy, and say Mr. Marrowbone the Smith was old Mrs. Marrowbone's
grandson. Because you know he was--now don't you, Davy? You tell Mrs.
Prichard he was old Mrs. Marrowbone's grandson!" Dave, however, shook
his head obdurately. No concession!
"Perhaps he was her son," said Mrs. Prichard. But this surmise only
prolonged the headshake; which promised to become chronic, to pause only
when some ground of agreement could be discovered.
"The child don't above half know what he's talking about, not to say
_know_!" Thus Aunt M'riar in a semi-aside to the old lady. It was
gratuitous insult to add:--"He don't reely know what's a grandson,
ma'am."
Dave's blue eyes flashed indignation. "Yorse I _does_ know!" cried he,
loud enough to lay himself open to remonstrance. He continued under due
restraint:--"I'm going to be old Mrs. Marrowbone's grangson." He then
remembered that the treaty was conditional, and added a proviso:--"So
long as I'm a good boy!"
"Won't you be my grandson, too, Davy darling?" said old Mrs. Prichard.
And, if you can conceive it, there was pain in her voice--real pain--as
well as the treble of old age. She was jealous, you see; jealous of this
old Mrs. Marrowbone, who seemed to come between her and her little
new-found waterspring in the desert.
But Dave was embarrassed, and she took his embarrassment for reluctance
to grant her the same status as old Mrs. Marrowbone. It was nothing of
the sort. It was merely his doubt whether such an arrangement would be
permissible under canon law. It was bigamy, however much you chose to
prevaricate. The old lady's appealing voice racked Dave's feelings. "I
carn't!" he exclaimed, harrowed. "I've spromussed to be Mrs.
Marrowbone's grangson--I have." And thereupon old Mrs. Prichard,
perceiving that he was really distressed, hastened to set his mind at
ease. Of course he couldn't be her grandson, if he was already Mrs.
Marrowbone's. She overlooked or ignored the possible compromise offered
by the fact that two grandmothers are the common lot of all mankind. But
it would be unjust--this was clear to her--that Dave should suffer in
any way from her jealous disposition. So she put her little grievance
away in her inmost heart--where indeed there was scarcely room for it,
so preoccupied had the places been--and then, as an active step towards
forgetting it, went on to talk to Dave about old Mrs. Marrowbone,
although she was not Mr. Marrowbone the Smith's grandmother.
"Tell us, Dave dear, about old Mrs. Marrowbone. Is she very old? Is she
as old as me?" To which Aunt M'riar as a sort of Greek chorus
added:--"There, Davy, now, you be a good boy, and tell how old Mrs.
Marrowbone is."
Dave considered. "She's not the soyme oyge," said he. "She can walk to
chutch and back, Sunday morning." But this was a judgment from physical
vigour, possibly a fallible guide. Dave, being prompted, attempted
description. Old Mrs. Marrowbone's hair was the only point he could
seize on. A cat, asleep on the hearthrug, supplied a standard of
comparison. "Granny Marrowbone's head's the colour of this," said Dave,
with decision, selecting a pale grey stripe. And Widow Thrale's was like
that--one with a deeper tone of brown, with scarcely any perceptible
grey.
"And which on Pussy is most like mine, Dave?" said Mrs. Prichard. There
was no hesitation in the answer to this. It was "that sort";--that is,
the colour of Pussy's stomach, unequivocal white. And which did Dave
like best--an unfair question which deserved and got a Parliamentary
answer. "All free," said Dave.
But this was merely colour of hair, a superficial distinction. How about
Granny Marrowbone's nose. "It's the soyme soyze," was the verdict, given
without hesitation. What colour were her eyes? "Soyme as yours." But
Dave was destined to incur public censure--Aunt M'riar representing the
public--for a private adventure into description. "She's more teef than
you," said he candidly.
"Well, now, I do declare if ever any little boy was so rude! I never
did! Whatever your Uncle Moses would say if he was told, I can't think."
Thus Aunt M'riar. But her attitude was artificial, for appearance sake,
and she knew perfectly well that Uncle Moses would only laugh and
encourage the boy. The culprit did not seem impressed, though ready to
make concessions. Yet he did not really better matters by
saying:--"She's got some teef, she has"; leaving it to be inferred that
old Mrs. Prichard had none, which was very nearly true. The old lady did
not seem the least hurt. Nor was she hurt even when Dave--seeking merely
to supply accurate detail--added, in connection with the old hand that
wandered caressingly over his locks and brows:--"Her hands is thicker
than yours is, a lot!"
"I often think, Mrs. Wardle," said she, taking no advantage of the new
topic offered, "what we might be spared if only our teeth was less
untrustworthy. Mine stood me out till over fifty, and since then they've
been going--going. Never was two such rows of teeth as I took with me to
the Colony. Over fifty years ago, Mrs. Wardle!"
"To think of that!" said Aunt M'riar. It was the time--not the
teeth--that seemed so wonderful. Naturally old Mrs. Prichard's teeth
went with her. But fifty years! And their owner quite bright still, when
once she got talking.
She was more talkative than usual this afternoon, and continued:--"No, I
do not believe, Mrs. Wardle, there was ever a girl with suchlike teeth
as mine were then." And then this memory brought back its companion
memory of the long past, but with no new sadness to her voice: "Only my
dear sister Phoebe's, Mrs. Wardle, I've told you about. She was my twin
sister ... I've told you ... you recollect?..."
"Yes, indeed, ma'am, and died when you was in the Colony!"
"I've never seen another more beautiful than Phoebe." She spoke with
such supreme unconsciousness of the twinship that Aunt M'riar forgot it,
too, until her next words came. "I was never free to say it of her in
those days, for they would have made sport of me for saying it. There
was none could tell us apart then. It does not matter now." She seemed
to fall away into an absent-minded dream, always caressing Dave's sunny
locks, which wanted cutting.
Aunt M'riar did not instantly perceive why a twin could not praise her
twin's beauty; at least, it needed reflection. She was clear on the
point, however, by the time Dave, merely watchful till now, suddenly
asked a question:--"What are stwins?" He had long been anxious for
enlightenment on this point, and now saw his opportunity. His inquiry
was checked--if his curiosity was not satisfied--by a statement that
when a little boy had a brother the same age that was twins, incorrectly
_s_twins. He had to affect satisfaction.
The old woman, roused by Dave's question, attested the general truth of
his informant's statements; then went back to the memory of her sister.
"But I never saw her again," said she.
"No, ma'am," said Aunt M'riar. "So I understood. It was in England she
died?"
"No--no! Out at sea. She was drowned at sea. Fifty years ago ...
Yes!--well on to fifty years ago." She fell back a little into her
dreamy mood; then roused herself to say:--"I often wonder, Mrs. Wardle,
suppose my sister had lived to be my age, should we have kept on alike?"
Aunt M'riar was not a stimulus to conversation as far as perspicuity
went. A general tone of sympathy had to make up for it. "We should have
seen, ma'am," said she.
"Supposing it had all gone on like as it was then, and we had just grown
old together! Supposing we had neither married, and no man had come into
it, should we all our lives have been mistaken for one another, so you
could not tell us apart?"
Aunt M'riar said "Ah!" and shook her head. She was not imaginative
enough to contribute to a conversation so hypothetical.
There was nothing of pathos, to a bystander, in the old woman's musical
voice, beyond its mere age--its reedy tone--which would have shown in it
just as clearly had she been speaking of any topic of the day. Conceive
yourself speaking about long forgotten events of your childhood to a
friend born thirty--forty--fifty years later, and say if such speech
would not be to you what old Mrs. Prichard's was to herself and her
hearer, much like revival of the past history of someone else. It was
far too long ago now--if it had ever been real; for sometimes indeed it
seemed all a dream--to lacerate her heart in recollecting it. The
memories that could do that belonged to a later time; some very much
later--the worst of them. Not but that the early memories could sting,
too, when dragged from their graves by some remorseless
resurrectionist--some sound, like that piano; some smell, like those
lilies of the valley. Measure her case against your own experience, if
its span of time is long enough to supply a parallel.
Her speech became soliloquy--was it because of a certain want of pliancy
in Aunt M'riar?--and seemed to dwell in a disjointed way on the
possibility that her sister might have changed with time otherwise than
herself, and might even have been hard to recognise had they met again
later. It would be different with two girls of different ages, each of
whom would after a long parting have no guide to the appearance of her
sister; while twins might keep alike; the image of either, seen in the
glass, forecasting the image of the other.
Aunt M'riar made a poor listener to this, losing clues and forging false
constructions. But her obliging disposition made her seem to understand
when she did not, and did duty for intelligence. Probably Dave--on the
watch for everything within human ken--understood nearly as much as Aunt
M'riar. Something was on the way, though, to rouse her, and when it came
she started as from a blow. What was that the old lady had just said?
How came that name in her mouth?...
"What I said just now, Mrs. Wardle?... Let me see!... About what my
husband used to say--that Phoebe's memory would go to sleep, not like
mine, and I was a fool to fret so about her. I would not know her again,
maybe, if I saw her, nor she me.... Yes--he said all that.... What?"
"What was the _name_ you said just now? Ralph ... something! Ralph
what?"
"Oh--yes--I know! What Phoebe would have been if she had married my
husband's brother--Mrs. Ralph Daverill...."
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Aunt M'riar.
"Ah, there now!" said the old lady. "To think I should never have told
you his name!" She missed the full strength of Aunt M'riar's
exclamation; accounted it mere surprise at what was either a reference
to a former husband or an admission of a pseudonym. Aunt M'riar was glad
to accept matters as they stood, merely disclaiming excessive
astonishment and suggesting that she might easy have guessed that Mrs.
Prichard had been married more than once. She was not--she said--one of
the prying sort. But she was silent about the cause of her amazement;
putting the name in a safe corner of her memory, to grapple with it
later.
The old woman, however, seemed to have no wish for concealments, saying
at once:--"I never had but one husband, Mrs. Wardle; but I'll tell you.
I've always gone by the name of Prichard ever since my son.... But I
never told you of him neither! It is he I would forget...." This
disturbed her--made her take the caressing hand restlessly from Dave's
head, to hold and be held by the other. She had to be silent a moment;
then said hurriedly:--"He was Ralph Thornton, after his father and
uncle. His father was Thornton--Thornton Daverill.... I'll tell you
another time." Thereupon Aunt M'riar held her tongue, and Mrs. Burr came
in with the fourpennyworth of crumpets.
* * * * *
An unskilful chronicler throws unfair burdens on his reader. The latter
need not read the chronicle certainly; there is always that resource!
If, however, he reads this one, let him keep in mind that Aunt M'riar
did _not_ know that the escaped prisoner of her newspaper-cutting had
been asking for a widow of the name of Daverill, whom he had somehow
traced to Sapps Court, any more than she knew--at that date--that old
Mrs. Prichard should really have been called old Mrs. Daverill. She only
knew that _his_ name was Daverill. So it was not in order to prevent
Mrs. Prichard seeing it that she cut that paragraph out of the _Morning
Star_. She must have had some other reason.