A PROFESSIONAL CONSULTATION ACROSS A COUNTER, AND HOW THE STORY OF
THE MAN IN HYDE PARK WAS TOLD BY DOLLY. HOW AUNT M'RIAR KNEW THE
NAME WAS NOT "DARRABLE." HOW SHE TOLD UNCLE MO WHOSE WIFE SHE WAS
AND WHOSE MOTHER MRS. PRITCHARD WAS. HOW POLLY DAVERILL JUNIOR HAD
DIED UNBAPTIZED, AND ATTEMPTS TO BULLY THE DEVIL ARE FUTILE. HOW
HER MOTHER WAS FORMERLY BARMAID AT THE ONE TUN, BUT BECAME AUNT
M'RIAR LATER, AND HOW THE TALLOW CANDLE JUST LASTED OUT. HOW DOLLY,
VERY SOUND ASLEEP, WAS GOOD FOR HER AUNT
"I shouldn't take any violent exercise, if I was you, Mr. Wardle," said
Mr. Ekings, the Apothecary, whose name you may remember Michael
Ragstroar had borrowed and been obliged to relinquish. "I should be very
careful what I ate, avoiding especially pork and richly cooked food. A
diet of fowls and fish--preferably boiled...."
"Can't abide 'em!" said Uncle Moses, who was talking over his symptoms
with Mr. Ekings at his shop, with Dolly on his knee. "And whose a-going
to stand Sam for me, livin' on this and livin' on that? Roasted
chicking's very pretty eating, for the sake of the soarsages, when
you're a Lord Mayor; but for them as don't easy run to half-crowns for
mouthfuls, a line has to be drawed. Down our Court a shilling has to go
a long way, Dr. Ekings."
The medical adviser shook his head weakly. "You're an intractable
patient, Mr. Moses," he said. He knew that Uncle Moses's circumstances
were what is called moderate. So are a church mouse's; and, in both
cases, the dietary is compulsory. Mr. Ekings tried for a common ground
of agreement. "Fish doesn't mount up to much, by the pound," he said,
vaguely.
"Fishes don't go home like butcher's meat," said Uncle Moses.
"You can't expect 'em to do that," said Mr. Ekings, glad of an
indisputable truth. "But there's a vast amount of nourishment in 'em,
anyway you put it."
"So there is, Dr. Ekings. In a vast amount of 'em. But you have to eat
it all up. Similar, grass and cows. Only there's no bones in the grass.
Now, you know, what I'm wanting is a pick-me-up--something with a nice
clean edge in the smell of it, like a bottle o' salts with holes in the
stopper. And tasting of lemons. I ain't speaking of the sort that has to
be shook when took. Nor yet with peppermint. It's a clear sort to see
through, up against the light, what I want."
Mr. Ekings, a humble practitioner in a poor neighbourhood, supplied more
mixtures in response to suggestions like Uncle Mo's, than to legitimate
prescriptions. So he at once undertook to fill out the order, saying in
reply to an inquiry, that it would come to threepence, but that Uncle Mo
must bring or send back the bottle. He then added a few drops of chloric
ether and ammonia, and some lemon to a real square bottleful of aq. pur.
haust., and put a label on it with superhuman evenness, on which was
written "The Mixture--one tablespoonful three times a day." Uncle Moses
watched the preparation of this _elixir vitae_ with the extremest
satisfaction. He foresaw its beneficial effect on his system, which he
had understood was to blame for his occasional attacks of faintness,
which had latterly been rather more frequent. Anything in such a clean
phial, with such a new cork, would be sure to do his system good.
Mrs. Riley came in for a bottle which was consciously awaiting her in
front of the leeches, and identified it as "the liniment," before Mr.
Ekings could call to mind where he'd stood it. She remarked, while
calculating coppers to cover the outlay, that she understood it was to
be well r-r-r-rhubbed in with the parrum of her hand, and that she was
to be thr-rusted not to lit the patiint get any of it near his mouth,
she having been borrun in Limerick morr' than a wake ago. She remarked
to Uncle Mo that his boy was looking his bist, and none the wurruss for
his accidint. Uncle Mo felt braced by the Celtic atmosphere, and thanked
Mrs. Riley cordially, for himself and Dave.
"Shouldn't do that, if I was you, Mr. Wardle," said Mr. Ekings the
Apothecary, as Uncle Mo hoisted Dolly on his shoulder to carry her home.
"No more shouldn't I, if you was me, Dr. Ekings," was the intractable
patient's reply. "Why, Lard bless you, man alive, Dolly's so light it's
as good as a lift-up, only to have her on your shoulders! Didn't you
never hear tell of gravitation? Well--that's it!" But Uncle Mo was out
of his depth.
"It'll do ye a powerful dale of good, Mr. Wardle," said Mrs. Riley.
"Niver you mind the docther!" And Uncle Mo departed, braced again, with
his _elixir vitae_ in his left hand, and Dolly on his right shoulder,
conversing on a topic suggested by Dr. Ekings's remarks about diet.
"When Dave tooktid Micky to see the fisses corched in the Turpentine,
there was a jenklum corched a fiss up out of the water, and another
jenklum corched another fiss up out of the water...." Dolly was pursuing
the subject in the style of the Patriarchs, who took their readers'
leisure for granted, and never grudged a repetition, when Uncle Mo
interrupted her to point out that it was not Dave who took Michael
Ragstroar to Hy' Park, but _vice versa_. Also that the whole proceeding
had been a disgraceful breach of discipline, causing serious alarm to
himself and Aunt M'riar, who had nearly lost their reason in
consequence--the exact expression being "fritted out of their wits." If
that young Micky ever did such a thing again, Uncle Mo said, the result
would be a pretty how-do-you-do, involving possibly fatal consequences
to Michael, and certainly local flagellation of unheard-of severity.
Dolly did not consider this was to the point, and pursued her narrative
without taking notice of it. "There was a jenklum corched a long fiss,
and there was another jenklum corched a short fiss, and there was
another jenklum corched a short fiss...." This seemed to bear frequent
repetition, but came to an end as soon as history ceased to supply the
facts. Then another phase came, that of the fishers who didn't corch no
fiss, whose name appeared to be Legion. They lasted as far as the arch
into Sapps Court, and Uncle Mo seemed rather to relish the monotony than
otherwise. He would have made a good Scribe in the days of the Pharaohs.
But Dolly came to the end of even the unsuccessful fishermen. Just as
they reached home, however, she produced her convincing incident, all
that preceded it having evidently been introduction pure and simple.
"And there was a man saided fings to Micky, and saided fings to Dave,
and saided fings to...." Here Dolly stuttered, became confused, and
ended up weakly: "No, he didn't saided no fings, to no one else."
A little _finesse_ was necessary to land the _elixir vitae_ on the
parlour chimney-piece, and Dolly on the hearthrug. Then Uncle Mo sat
down in his own chair to recover breath, saying in the course of a
moment:--"And what did the man say to Dave, and what did he say to young
Sparrowgrass?" He did not suppose that "the man" was a person capable of
identification; he was an unknown unit, but good to talk about.
"He saided Mrs. Picture." Dolly placed the subject she proposed to treat
broadly before her audience, with a view to its careful analysis at
leisure.
"What on 'arth did he say Mrs. Picture for? _He_ don't know Mrs.
Picture." The present tense used here acknowledged the man's
authenticity, and encouraged the little maid--three and three-quarters,
you know!--to further testimony. It came fairly fluently, considering
the witness's recent acquisition of the English language.
"He doos know Mrs. Picture, ass he doos, and he saided Mrs. Picture to
Micky, ass he did." This was plenty for a time, and during that time the
witness could go on nodding with her eyes wide open, to present the
subject lapsing, for she had found out already how slippery grown-up
people are in argument. Great force was added by her curls, which lent
themselves to flapping backwards and forwards as she nodded.
It was impossible to resist such evidence, outwardly at least, and Uncle
Mo appeared to accept it. "Then the man said Mrs. Picture to Dave," said
he. "And Dave told it on to you, was that it?" He added, for the general
good of morality:--"_You're_ a nice lot of young Pickles!"
But this stopped the nodding, which changed suddenly to a negative
shake, of great decision. "The man never saided nuffint to Dave, no he
didn't."
"Thought you said he did. You're a good 'un for a witness-box! Come up
and sit on your old uncle. The man said Mrs. Picture to young
Sparrowgrass--was that it?" Dolly nodded violently. "And young
Sparrowgrass he passed it on to Dave?" But it appeared not, and Dolly
had to wrestle with an explanation. It was too much involved for
letterpress, but Uncle Mo thought he could gather that Dave had been
treated as a mere bystander, supposed to be absorbed in angling, during
a conversation between Michael Ragstroar and the Man. "Dave he came home
and told you what the Man said to Micky--was that it?" So Uncle Mo
surmised aloud, not at all clear that Dolly would understand him. But,
as it turned out, he was right, and Dolly was glad to be able to attest
his version of the facts. She resumed the nodding, but slower, as though
so much emphasis had ceased to be necessary. "Micky toldited Dave," she
said. She then became immensely amused at a way of looking at the event
suggested by her uncle. The Man had told Micky; Micky had told Dave;
Dave had told Dolly; and Dolly had told Uncle Mo, who now intensified
the interest of the event by saying he should tell Aunt M'riar. Dolly
became vividly anxious for this climax, and felt that this was life
indeed, when Uncle Mo called out to Aunt M'riar:--"Come along here,
M'riar, and see what sort of head and tail you can make of this here
little Dolly!" Whereupon Aunt M'riar came in front out at the back, and
listened to a repetition of Dolly's tale while she dried her arms, which
had been in a wash-tub.
"Well, Mo," she said, when Dolly had repeated it, more or less
chaotically, "if you ask me, what I say is--you make our Dave speak out
and tell you, when he's back from school, and say you won't have no
nonsense. For the child is that secretive it's all one's time is worth
to be even with him.... What's the Doctor's stuff for you've been
spending your money on at Ekingses?"
"Only a stimulatin' mixture for to give tone to the system. Dr. Ekings
says it'll do it a world o' good. Never known it fail, he hasn't."
"Have you been having any more alarming symptoms, Mo, and never told
me?"
"Never been better in my life, M'riar. But I thought it was getting on
for time I should have a bottle o' stuff, one sort or other. Don't do to
go too long without a dose, nowadays." Whereupon Aunt M'riar looked
incredulous, and read the label, and smelt the bottle, and put it back
on the mantelshelf. And Uncle Mo asked for the wineglass broke off
short, out of the cupboard; because it was always best to be beforehand,
whether you had anything the matter or not.
Whatever Aunt M'riar said, Dave was not secretive. Probably she meant
communicative, and was referring to the fact that Dave, whenever he was
called on for information, though always prompt to oblige, invariably
made reply to his questioner in an undertone, in recognition of a mutual
confidence, and exclusion from it of the Universe. He had a soul above
the vulgarities of publication. Aunt M'riar merely used a word that
sounded well, irrespective of its meaning--a common literary practice.
Therefore Dave, when applied to by Uncle Mo for particulars of what "the
Man" said, made a statement of which only portions reached the general
public. This was the usual public after supper; for Mr. Alibone's
companionship in an evening pipe was an almost invariable incident at
that hour.
"What's the child a-sayin' of, Mo?" said Aunt M'riar.
"Easy a bit, old Urry Scurry!" said Uncle Mo, drawing on his imagination
for an epithet. "Let me do a bit of listening.... What was it the party
said again, Davy--just _pre_cisely?..." Dave was even less audible than
before in his response to this, and Uncle Mo evidently softened it for
repetition:--"Said if Micky told him any--etceterer--lies he'd rip his
heart out? Was that it, Dave?"
"Yorce," said Dave, aloud and emphatically. "_This_ time!" Which seemed
to imply that the speaker had refrained from doing so, to his credit, on
some previous occasion. Dave laid great stress on this point.
Aunt M'riar seemed rather panic struck at the nature of this revelation.
"Well now, Mo," said she, "I do wonder at you, letting the child tell
such words! And before Mr. Alibone, too!"
Mr. Jerry's expression twinkled, as though he protested against being
credited with a Pharisaical purity, susceptible to shocks. Uncle Mo
said, with less than usual of his easy-going manner:--"I'm a going,
M'riar, to get to the bottom of this here start. So you keep outside o'
the ropes!" and then after a little by-play with Dave and Dolly, which
made the hair of both rougher than ever, he said suddenly to
Dave:--"Well, and wasn't you frightened?"
"Micky wasn't frightened," said Dave, discreetly evasive. He objected to
pursuing the subject, and raised a new issue. The sketch that followed
of the interview between Micky and the Man was a good deal blurred by
constant India-rubber, but its original could be inferred from
it--probably as follows, any omissions to conciliate public censorship
being indicated by stars. Micky speaks first:
"Who'll you rip up? You lay 'ands upon me, that's all! You do, and I'll
blind your eyesight, s'elp me! Why, I'd summing a Police Orficer, and
have you took to the Station, just as soon as look at you...." It may be
imagined here that Michael's voice rose to a half-shriek, following some
movement of the Man towards him. "I would, by Goard! You try it on,
that's all!"
"Shut up with your * * row, you * * young * * ... No, master, I ain't
molestin' of the boy; only just frightening him for a bit of a spree!
_I_ don't look like the sort to hurt boys, do I, guv'nor?" This was
addressed to a bystander, named in Dave's report as "the gentleman." Who
was accompanied by another, described as "the lady." The latter may have
said to the former:--"I think he looks a very kind-hearted man, my dear,
and you are making a fuss about nothing." The latter certainly said
"Hggrromph!" or something like it, which the reporter found difficult to
render. Then the man assumed a hypocritical and plausible manner, saying
to Michael:--"I'm your friend, my boy, and there's a new shilling for
you, good for two * * tanners any day of the week." Micky seemed to have
been softened by this, and entered into a colloquy with the donor,
either not heard or not understood by Dave, whose narrative seemed to
point to his having been sent to a distance, with a doubt about
inapplicable epithets bestowed on him by the Man, calling for asterisks
in a close report. Some of these were probably only half-understood,
even by Micky; being, so to speak, the chirps of a gaol-bird. But Dave's
report seemed to point to "Now, is that * * young * * to be trusted not
to split?" although he made little attempt to render the asterisky parts
of speech.
Uncle Mo and Mr. Jerry glanced at one another, seeming to understand a
phrase that had puzzled Aunt M'riar.
"That was it, Mo," said Mr. Jerry, exactly as if Uncle Mo had spoken,
"_spit upon_ meant _split upon_." Dave in his innocence had supposed
that a profligacy he was himself sometimes guilty of had been referred
to. He felt that his uncle's knee was for the moment the stool of
repentance, but was relieved when a new reading was suggested. There
could be no disgrace in splitting, though it might be painful.
"And, of course," said Uncle Mo, ruffling Dave's locks, "of course, you
kept your mouth tight shut--hay?" Dave, bewildered, assented. He
connected this _bouche cousue_ with his own decorous abstention, not
without credit to himself. Who shall trace the inner workings of a small
boy's brain? "Instead of telling of it all, straight off, to your poor
old uncle!" There was no serious indignation in Uncle Mo's tone,
but the boy was too new for nice distinctions. The suggestion of
disloyalty wounded him deeply, and he rushed into explanation.
"Becorze--becorze--becorze--becorze," said he--"becorze Micky said _not_
to!" He arrived at his climax like a squib that attains its ideal.
"Micky's an owdacious young varmint," said Uncle Mo. "Small boys that
listened to owdacious young varmints never used to come to much good,
not in _my_ time!" Dave looked shocked at Uncle Mo's experience. But he
had reservations to offer as to Micky, which distinguished him from
vulgar listeners to incantations. "Micky said not to, and Micky said
Uncle Mo didn't want to hear tell of no Man out in Hoy' Park, and me to
keep my mouth shut till I was tolded to speak."
"And you told him to speak, and he spoke!" said Mr. Jerry, charitably
helping Dave. "You couldn't expect any fairer than that, old Mo." Public
opinion sanctioned a concession in this sense, and Dave came off the
stool of repentance.
"Very good, then!" said Uncle Mo. "That's all squared, and we can cross
it off. But what I'm trying after is, how did this here ...
bad-languagee"--he halted a minute to make this word--"come to know
anything about Goody Prichard upstairs?"
"Did he?" said Mr. Jerry, who of course had only heard Dave on the
subject.
"This young party said so," said Uncle Mo, crumpling Dolly to identify
her, "at the very first go off. Didn't you, little ginger-pop, hay?"
This new epithet was a passing recognition of the suddenness with which
Dolly had broken out as an informant. It gratified her vanity, and made
her chuckle.
Dave meanwhile had been gathering for an oratorical effort, and now
culminated. "I never told Dolly nuffint _about_ Mrs. Picture upstairs.
What _I_ said was 'old widder lady.'"
"Dolly translated it, Mo, don't you see?" said Mr. Jerry. Then, to
illuminate possible obscurity, he added:--"Off o' one slate onto the
other! Twig?"
"I twig you, Jerry." Uncle Mo winked at his friend to show that he was
alive to surroundings and tickled Dave suddenly from a motive of policy.
"How come this cove to know anything about any widder lady--hay? That's
a sort of p'int we've got to consider of." Dave was impressed by his
uncle's appearance of profound thought, and was anxious not to lag
behind in the solution of stiff problems. He threw his whole soul into
his answer. "Because he was _The Man_." Nathan the prophet can scarcely
have been more impressive. Perhaps, on the occasion Dave's answer
recalls, someone said:--"Hullo!" in Hebrew, and gave a short whistle.
That was what Mr. Jerry did, this time.
Uncle Mo enjoined self-restraint, telegraphically; and said,
verbally:--"What man, young Legs? Steady a minute, and tell us who he
was." Which will be quite intelligible to anyone whose experience has
included a small boy in thick boots sitting on his knee, and becoming
excited by a current topic.
Dave restrained his boots, and concentrated his mind on a statement. It
came with pauses and repetitions, which may be omitted. "He worze the
same Man as when you and me and Micky, only not Dolly, see him come
along down the Court Sunday morning. _Munce_ ago!" This was emphatic, to
express the date's remoteness. "He wanted for to be told about old Widow
Darrable who lived down this Court, and Micky he said no such name, nor
yet anywhere's about this neighbourhood, he said. And the Man he said
Micky was a young liar. And Micky he said who are you a-callin'
liar?..."
"_What_ name did he say?" Uncle Mo interrupted, with growing interest.
Dave repeated his misapprehension of it, which incorporated an idea
that similar widows would have similar surnames. If one was Marrable, it
was only natural that another should be Darrable.
Aunt M'riar, whose interest also had been some time growing, struck in
incisively. "The name was Daverill. He's mixed it up with the old lady
in the country he calls his granny." She was the more certain this was
so owing to a recent controversy with Dave about this name, ending in
his surrender of the pronunciation "Marrowbone" as untenable, but
introducing a new element of confusion owing to Marylebone Church, a
familiar landmark.
There was something in Aunt M'riar's manner that made Uncle Mo
say:--"Anything disagreed, M'riar?" Because, observe, his interest in
this mysterious man in the Park turned entirely on Mrs. Prichard's
relations with him, and he had never imputed any knowledge of him to
Aunt M'riar. Why should he? Indeed, why should we, except from the
putting of two and two together? Of which two twos, Uncle Mo might have
known either the one or the other--according to which was which--but not
both. This story has to confess occasional uncertainty about some of its
facts. There may have been more behind Uncle Mo's bit of rudeness about
Aunt M'riar's disquiet than showed on the surface. However, he never
asked any questions.
* * * * *
Those who have ever had the experience of keeping their own counsel for
a long term of years know that every year makes it harder to take others
into confidence. A concealed troth-plight, marriage, widowhood--to name
the big concealments involving no disgrace--gets less and less easy to
publish as time slips by, even as the hinges rust of doors that no man
opens. There may be nothing to blush about in that cellar, but the key
may be lost and the door-frame may have gripped the door above, or the
footstone jammed it from below, and such fungus-growth as the darkness
has bred has a claim to freedom from the light. Let it all rest--that is
its owner's word to his own soul--let it rest and be forgotten! All the
more when the cellar is full of garbage, and he knows it.
There was no garbage in Aunt M'riar's cellar that she was guilty of, but
for all that she would have jumped at any excuse to leave that door
tight shut. The difficulty was not so much in what she had to tell--for
her conscience was clear--as in rousing an unprepared mind to the
hearing of it. Uncle Mo, quite the reverse of apathetic to anything that
concerned the well-being of any of his surroundings, probably accounted
Aunt M'riar's as second to none but the children's. Nevertheless, the
difficulty of rousing him to an active interest in this hidden
embarrassment of hers, of which he had no suspicion, was so palpable to
Aunt M'riar, that she was sorely put to it to decide on a course of
action. And the necessity for action was not imaginary. Keep in mind
that all Uncle Mo's knowledge of Aunt M'riar's antecedents was summed up
in the fact of her widowhood, which he took for granted--although he had
never received it _totidem verbis_ when she first came to supplant Mrs.
Twiggins--and which had been confirmed as Time went on, and no husband
appeared to claim her. Even if he could have suspected that her husband
was still living, there was nothing in the world to connect him with
this escaped convict. No wonder Uncle Mo's complete unconsciousness
seemed to present an impassable barrier to a revelation. Aunt M'riar had
not the advantages of the Roman confessional, with its suggestive
_guichet_. Had some penitent, deprived of that resource, been driven
back on the analogous arrangement of a railway booking-office, the
difficulty of introducing the subject could scarcely have been greater.
However, Aunt M'riar was not going to be left absolutely without
assistance. That evening--the evening, that is, of the day when Dave
told the tale of the Man in the Park--Uncle Moses showed an unusual
restlessness, following on a period of thoughtfulness and silence. After
supper he said suddenly:--"I'm a-going to take a turn out, M'riar. Any
objection?"
"None o' my making, Mo. Only Mr. Jerry, he'll be round. What's to be
told him?"
"Ah--I'll tell you. Just you say to Jerry--just you tell him...."
"What'll I tell him?" For Uncle Mo appeared to waver.
"Just you tell him to drop in at The Sun, and bide till I come. They've
a sing-song going on to-night, with the pianner. He'll make hisself
happy for an hour. I'll be round in an hour's time, tell him."
"And where are you off for all of an hour, Mo?"
"That's part of the p'int, M'riar. Don't you be too inquis-eye-tive....
No--I don't mind tellin' of ye, if it's partic'lar. I'm going to drop
round to the Station to shake hands with young Simmun Rowe--they've made
him Inspector there--he's my old pal Jerky Rowe's son I knew from a boy.
Man under forty, as I judge. But he won't let me swaller up _his_ time,
trust him! Tell Jerry I'll jine him at half-after nine, the very
latest."
"I'll acquaint him what you say, Mo. And you bear in mind what Mr.
Jeffcoat at The Sun had to say about yourself, Mo."
"What was it, M'riar? Don't you bottle it up."
"Why, Mr. Jeffcoat he said, after passing the time of day, round in
Clove Street, 'I look to Mr. Wardle to keep up the character of The
Sun,' he said. So you bear in mind, Mo."
Whereupon Uncle Mo departed, and Aunt M'riar was left to her own
reflections, the children being abed and asleep by now; Dolly certainly,
probably Dave.
Presently the door to the street was pushed open, and Mr. Jerry
appeared. "I don't see no Moses?" said he.
Aunt M'riar gave her message, over her shoulder. To justify this she
should have been engaged on some particular task of the needle, easiest
performed when seated. Mr. Alibone, to whom her voice sounded unusual,
looked round to see. He only saw that her hands were in her lap, and no
sign was visible of their employment. This was unlike his experience of
Aunt M'riar. "Find the weather trying, Mrs. Wardle?"
"It don't do me any harm."
"Ah--some feels the heat more than others."
Aunt M'riar roused herself to reply:--"If you're meaning me, Mr.
Alibone, it don't touch me so much as many. Only my bones are not so
young as they were--that's how it came I was sitting down. Now,
supposin' you'd happened in five minutes later, you might have found me
tidin' up. I've plenty to do yet awhile." But this was not convincing,
although the speaker wished to make it so; probably it would have been
better had less effort gone to the utterance of it. For Aunt M'riar's
was too obvious.
Mr. Jerry laughed cheerfully, for consolation. "Come now, Aunt M'riar,"
said he, "_you_ ain't the one to talk as if you was forty, and be making
mention of your bones. Just you let them alone for another fifteen year.
That'll be time." Mr. Jerry had been like one of the family, so
pleasantry of this sort was warranted.
It was not unwelcome to Aunt M'riar. "I'm forty-six, Mr. Jerry," she
said. "And forty-six is six-and-forty."
"And fifty-six is six-and-fifty, which is what I am, this very next
Michaelmas. Now I call that a coincidence, Mrs. Wardle."
Aunt M'riar reflected. "I should have said it was an accident, Mr.
Jerry. Like anythin' else, as the sayin' is. You mention to Mo, not to
be late, no more than need be. Not to throw away good bedtime!" Mr.
Jerry promised to impress the advantages of early hours, and went his
way. But his reflections on his short interview with Aunt M'riar took
the form of asking himself what had got her, and finding no answer to
the question. Something evidently had, from her manner, for there was
nothing in what she said.
He asked the same question of Uncle Mo, coming away from The Sun, where
they did not wait for the very last tune on the piano, to the disgust of
Mr. Jeffcoat, the proprietor. "What's got Aunt M'riar?" said Uncle Mo,
repeating his words. "Nothin's got Aunt M'riar. She'd up and tell me
fast enough if there was anything wrong. What's put you on that lay,
Jerry?"
"I couldn't name any one thing, Mo. But going by the looks of it, I
should judge there was a screw loose in somebody's wheelbarrow. P'r'aps
I'm mistook. P'r'aps I ain't. S'posing you was to ask her, Mo!--asking
don't cost much."
Uncle Moses seemed to weigh the outlay. "No," he said. "Asking wouldn't
send me to the work'us." And when he had taken leave of his friend at
their sundering-point, he spent the rest of his short walk home in
speculation as to what had set Jerry off about Aunt M'riar. It was with
no misgiving of hearing of anything seriously amiss that he said to her,
as he sat in the little parlour recovering his breath, after walking
rather fast, while she cultured the flame of a candle whose wick had
been cut off short:--"Everything all right, M'riar?" He was under the
impression that he asked in a nonchalant, easy-going manner, and he was
quite mistaken. It was only perfectly palpable that he meant it to be
so, and he who parades his indifference is apt to overreach himself.
Aunt M'riar had been making up her mind that she must tell Mo what she
knew about this man Daverill, at whatever cost to herself. It would have
been much easier had she known much less. Face to face with an
opportunity of telling it, her resolution wavered and her mind,
imperfectly made up, favoured postponement. To-morrow would do. "Ho
yes," said she. "Everything's all right, Mo. Now you just get to bed.
Time enough, I say, just on to midnight!" But her manner was defective
and her line of argument ill-chosen. Its result was to produce in her
hearer a determination to discover what had got her. Because it was
evident that Jerry was right, and that _something_ had.
"One of the kids a-sickenin' for measles! Out with it, M'riar! Which is
it--Dave?"
"No, it ain't any such a thing. Nor yet Dolly.... Anyone ever see such a
candle?"
"Then it's scarlatinar, or mumps. One or other on 'em!"
"Neither one nor t'other, Mo. 'Tain't neither Dave nor Dolly, this
time." But something or other was somebody or something, that was clear!
Aunt M'riar may have meant this, and yet not seen how very clear she
made it. She recurred to that candle, and a suggestion of Uncle Mo's.
"It's easy sayin', 'Run the toller off,' Mo; but who's to do it with
such a little flame?"
Presently the candle, carefully fostered, picked up heart, and the
tension of doubt about its future was relieved. "She'll do now," said
Uncle Mo, assigning it a gender it had no claim to. "But what's gone
wrong, M'riar?"
The appeal for information was too simple and direct to allow of keeping
it back; without, at least, increasing its implied importance. Aunt
M'riar only intensified this when she answered:--"Nothing at all! At
least, nothing to nobody but me. Tell you to-morrow, Mo! It's time we
was all abed. Mind you don't wake up Dave!" For Dave was becoming his
uncle's bedfellow, and Dolly her aunt's; exchanges to vary monotony
growing less frequent as the children grew older.
But Uncle Mo did not rise to depart. He received the candle, adolescent
at last, and sat holding it and thinking. He had become quite alive now
to what had impressed Mr. Jerry in Aunt M'riar's appearance and manner,
and was harking back over recent events to find something that would
account for it. The candle's secondary education gave him an excuse. Its
maturity would have left him no choice but to go to bed.
A light that flashed through his mind anticipated it. "It's never that
beggar," said he, and then, seeing that his description was
insufficient:--"Which one? Why, the one we was a-talking of only this
morning. Him I've been rounding off with Inspector Rowe--our boy's man
he saw in the Park. You've not been alarmin' yourself about _him_?" For
Uncle Mo thought he could see his way to alarm for a woman, even a
plucky one, in the mere proximity of such a ruffian. He would have gone
on to say that the convict was, by now, probably again in the hands of
the police, but he saw as the candle flared that Aunt M'riar's usually
fresh complexion had gone grey-white, and that she was nodding in
confirmation of something half-spoken that she could not articulate.
He was on his feet at his quickest, but stopped at the sound of her
voice, reviving. "What--what's that, M'riar?" he cried. "Say it again,
old girl!" So strange and incredible had the words seemed that he
thought he heard, that he could not believe in his own voice as he
repeated them:--"_Your_ husband!" He was not clear about it even then;
for, after a pause long enough for the candle to burn up, and show him,
as he fell back in his seat, Aunt M'riar, tremulous but relieved at
having spoken, he repeated them again:--"Your _husband_! Are ye sure
you're saying what you mean, M'riar?"
That it was a relief to have said it was clear in her reply:--"Ay, Mo,
that's all right--right as I said it. My husband. You've known I had a
husband, Mo." His astonishment left him speechless, but he just managed
to say:--"I thought him dead;" and a few moments passed. Then she added,
as though deprecatingly:--"You'll not be angry with me, Mo, when I tell
you the whole story?"
Then he found his voice. "Angry!--why, God bless the wench!--what call
have I to be angry?--let alone it's no concern of mine to be meddlin'
in. Angry! No, no, M'riar, if it's so as you say, and you haven't gone
dotty on the brain!"
"I'm not dotty, Mo. You'll find it all right, just like I tell you...."
"Well, then, I'm mortal sorry for you, and there you have it, in a word.
Poor old M'riar!" His voice went up to say:--"But you shan't come to no
harm through that character, if that's what's in it. I'll promise ye
that." It fell again. "No--I won't wake the children.... I ain't quite
on the shelf yet, nor yet in the dustbin. There's my hand on it,
M'riar."
"I know you're good, Mo." She caught at the hand he held out to give
her, and kept it. "I know you're good, and you'll do like you say. Only
I hope he won't come this way no more. I hope he don't know I'm here."
She seemed to shudder at the thought of him.
"Don't he know you're here? That's rum, too. But it's rum, all round.
Things _are_ rum, sometimes. Now, just you take it easy, M'riar, and if
there's anything you'll be for telling me--because I'm an old friend
like, d'ye see?--why, just you tell me as much as comes easy, and no
more. Or just tell me nothing at all, if it sootes you better, and I'll
set here and give an ear to it." Uncle Mo resumed his former seat, and
Aunt M'riar put back the hand he released in her apron, its usual place
when not on active service.
"There's nothing in it I wouldn't tell, Mo--not to you--and it won't use
much of the candle to tell it. I'd be the easier for you to know, only
I'm not so quick as some at the telling of things." She seemed puzzled
how to begin.
Uncle Moses helped. "How long is it since you set eyes on him?"
"Twenty-five years--all of twenty-five years."
Uncle Mo was greatly relieved at hearing this. "Well, but,
M'riar--twenty-five years! You're shet of the beggar--clean shet of him!
You are _that_, old girl, legally and factually. But then," said he,
"when was you married to him?"
"I've got my lines to show for that, Mo. July six, eighteen
twenty-nine."
Uncle Mo repeated the date slowly after her, and then seemed to plunge
into a perplexing calculation, very distorting to the natural repose of
his face. Touching his finger-tips appeared to make his task easier.
After some effort, which ended without clear results, he said:--"What
I'm trying to make out is, how long was you and him keeping house?
Because it don't figure up. How long should you say?"
"We were together six weeks--no more."
"And you--you never seen him since?"
"Never since. Twenty-five years agone, this last July!" At which Uncle
Mo was so confounded that words failed him. His only resource was a long
whistle. Aunt M'riar, on the contrary, seemed to acquire narrative
powers from hearing her own voice, and continued:--"I hadn't known him a
twelvemonth, and I should have been wiser than to listen to him--at my
age, over one-and-twenty!"
"But you made him marry you, M'riar?"
"I did that, Mo. And I have the lines and my ring, to show it. But I
never told a soul, not even mother. I wouldn't have told her, to be
stopped--so bad I was!... What!--Dolly--Dolly's mother? Why, she was
just a young child, Dave's age!... How did I come to know him? It was
one day in the bar--he came in with Tom Spring, and ordered him a quart
of old Kennett. He was dressed like a gentleman, and free with his
money...."
"I knew old Tom Spring--he's only dead this two years past. I s'pose
that was The Tun, near by Piccadilly, I've heard you speak on."
"... That was where I see him, Mo, worse luck for the day! The One Tun
Inn. They called him the gentleman from Australia. He was for me and him
to go to Brighton by the coach, and find the Parson there. But I stopped
him at that, and we was married in London, quite regular, and we went to
Brighton, and then he took me to Doncaster, to be at the races. There's
where he left me, at the Crown Inn we went to, saying he'd be back afore
the week was out. But he never came--only letters came with money--I'll
say that for him. Only no address of where he was, nor scarcely a word
to say how much he was sending. But I kep' my faith towards him; and the
promise I made, I kep' all along. And I've never borne his name nor said
one word to a living soul beyond one or two of my own folk, who were
bound to be quiet, for their sake and mine. Dolly's mother, she came to
know in time. But the Court's called me Aunt M'riar all along."
A perplexity flitted through Uncle Mo's reasoning powers, and vanished
unsolved. Why had he accepted "Aunt M'riar" as a sufficient style and
title, almost to the extent of forgetting the married name he had heard
assigned to its owner five years since? He would probably have forgotten
it outright, if the post had not, now and then--but very rarely--brought
letters directed to "Mrs. Catchpole," which he had passed on, if he saw
them first, with the comment:--"I expect that's meant for you, Aunt
M'riar"; treating the disposition of some person unknown to use that
name as a pardonable idiosyncrasy. When catechized about her, he had
been known to answer:--"She ain't a widder, not to my thinking, but her
husband he's as dead as a door-nail. Name of Scratchley; or
Simmons--some such a name!" As for the designation of "Mrs. Wardle" used
as a ceremonial title, it was probably a vague attempt to bring the
household into tone. Whoever knows the class she moved in will have no
trouble in recalling some case of a similar uncertainty.
This is by way of apology for Uncle Mo's so easily letting that
perplexity go, and catching at another point. "What did he make you
promise him, M'riar? Not to let on, I'll pound it! He wanted you to keep
it snug--wasn't that the way of it?"
"Ah, that was it, Mo. To keep it all private, and never say a word."
Then Aunt M'riar's answer became bewildering, inexplicable. "Else his
family would have known, and then I should have seen his mother. Seein'
I never did, it's no wonder I didn't know her again. I might have, for
all it's so many years." It was more the manner of saying this than the
actual words, that showed that she was referring to a recent meeting
with her husband's mother.
Uncle Mo sat a moment literally open-mouthed with astonishment. At
length he said:--"Why, when and where, woman alive, did you see his
mother?"
"There now, Mo, see what I said--what a bad one I am at telling of
things! Of course, Mrs. Prichard upstairs, she's Ralph Daverill's
mother, and he's the man who got out of prison in the _Mornin' Star_
and killed the gaoler. And he's the same man came down the Court that
Sunday and Dave see in the Park. That's Ralph Thornton Daverill, and
he's my husband!"
Uncle Mo gave up the idea of answering. The oppression of his
bewilderment was too great. It seemed to come in gusts, checked off at
intervals by suppressed exclamations and knee-slaps. It was a knockdown
blow, with no one to call time. But then, there were no rules, so when a
new inquiry presented itself, abrupt utterance followed:--"Wasn't there
any?... wasn't there any?..." followed by a pause and a difficulty of
word-choice. Then in a lowered voice, an adjustment of its terms, due to
delicacy:--"Wasn't there any consequences--such as one might expect, ye
know?"
Aunt M'riar did not seem conscious of any need for delicacies. "My baby
was born dead," she said. "That's what you meant, Mo, I take it?" Then
only getting in reply:--"That was it, M'riar," she went on:--"None knew
about it but mother, when it was all over and done with, later by a year
and more. I would have called the child Polly, being a girl, if it had
lived to be christened.... Why would I?--because that was the name he
knew me by at The Tun."
Uncle Mo began to say:--"If the Devil lets him off easy, I'll ..." and
stopped short. It may have been because he reflected on the limitations
of poor Humanity, and the futility of bluster in this connection, or
because he had a question to ask. It related to Aunt M'riar's
unaccountable ignorance throughout of Daverill's transportation to
Norfolk Island, and the particular felony that led to it. "If you was
not by way of seeing the police-reports, where was all your friends, to
say never a word?"
"No one said nothing to me," said Aunt M'riar. She seemed hazy as to the
reason at first; then a light broke:--"They never knew his name, ye see,
Mo." He replied on reflection:--"Course they didn't--right you are!" and
then she added:--"I only told mother that; and she's no reader."
A mystery hung over one part of the story--how did she account for
herself to her family? Was she known to have been married, or had
popular interpretation of her absence inclined towards charitable
silence about its causes--asked no questions, in fact, giving up
barmaids as past praying for? She seemed to think it sufficient light on
the subject to say:--"It was some length of time before I went back
home, Mo," and he had to press for particulars.
His conclusion, put briefly, was that this deserted wife, reappearing
at home with a wedding-ring after two years' absence, had decided that
she would fulfil her promise of silence best by giving a false married
name. She had engineered her mother's inspection of her marriage-lines,
so as to leave that good woman--a poor scholar--under the impression
that Daverill's name was Thornton; not a very difficult task. The name
she had chosen was Catchpole; and it still survived as an identifying
force, if called on. But it was seldom in evidence, "Aunt M'riar"
quashing its unwelcome individuality. The general feeling had been that
"Mrs. Catchpole" might be anybody, and did not recommend herself to the
understanding. There was some sort o' sense in "Aunt M'riar."
The eliciting of these points, hazily, was all Uncle Mo was equal to
after so long a colloquy, and Aunt M'riar was not in a condition to tell
more. She relit another half-candle that she had blown out for economy
when the talk set in, and called Uncle Mo's attention to the moribund
condition of his own:--"There's not another end in the house, Mo," said
she. So Uncle Mo had to use that one, or get to bed in the dark.
He had been already moved to heartfelt anger that day against this very
Daverill, having heard from his friend the Police-Inspector the story of
his arrest at The Pigeons, at Hammersmith; and, of course, of the
atrocious crime which had been his latest success with the opposite sex.
This Police-Inspector must have been Simeon Rowe, whom you may remember
as stroke-oar of the boat that was capsized there in the winter, when
Sergeant Ibbetson of the river-police met his death in the attempt to
capture Daverill. Uncle Mo's motive in visiting the police-station had
not been only to shake hands with the son of an old acquaintance. He had
carried what information he had of the escaped convict to those who were
responsible for his recapture.
* * * * *
If you turn back to the brief account the story gave of Maisie
Daverill's--or Prichard's--return to England, and her son's marriage,
and succeed in detecting in Polly the barmaid at the One Tun any trace
of the Aunt M'riar with whom you were already slightly acquainted, it
will be to the discredit of the narrator. For never did a greater change
pass over human identity than the one which converted the _beaute de
diable_ of the young wench just of age, who was serving out stimulants
to the Ring, and the Turf, and the men-about-town of the late twenties,
to that of the careworn, washtub-worn, and needle-worn manipulator of
fine linen and broidery, who had been in charge of Dolly and Dave
Wardle since their mother's death three years before. Never was there a
more striking testimony to the power of Man to make a desolation of the
life of Woman, nor a shrewder protest against his right to do so. For
Polly the Barmaid, look you, had done nothing that is condemned by the
orthodox moralities; she had not even flown in the face of her legal
duty to her parents. Was she not twenty-one, and does not that magic
numeral pay all scores?
The Australian gentleman had one card in his pack that was Ace of Trumps
in the game of Betrayal. He only played it when nothing lower would take
the trick. And Polly got little enough advantage from the sanction of
the Altar, her marriage-lines and her wedding-ring, in so far as she
held to the condition precedent of those warrants of respectability,
that she should observe silence about their existence. The only
duplicity of which she had been guilty was the assumption of a false
married name, and that had really seemed to her the only possible
compromise between a definite breach of faith and passive acceptance of
undeserved ill-fame. And when the hideous explanation of Daverill's long
disappearance came about, and _eclaircissement_ seemed inevitable, she
saw the strange discovery she had made of his relation to Mrs. Prichard,
as an aggravation to the embarrassment of acknowledging his past
relation to herself.
There was one feeling only that one might imagine she might have felt,
yet was entirely a stranger to. Might she not have experienced a
longing--a curiosity, at any rate--to set eyes again on the husband who
had deserted her all those long years ago? And this especially in view
of her uncertainty as to how long his absence had been compulsory? As a
matter of fact, her only feeling about this terrible resurrection was
one of shrinking as from a veritable carrion, disinterred from a grave
she had earned her right to forget. Why need this gruesome memory be
raked up to plague her?
The only consolation she could take with her to a probably sleepless
pillow was the last charge of the old prizefighter to her not to fret.
"You be easy, M'riar. He shan't come a-nigh _you_. I'll square _him_
fast enough, if he shows up down this Court--you see if I don't!" But
when she reached it, there was still balm in Gilead. For was not Dolly
there, so many fathoms deep in sleep that she might be kissed with
impunity, long enough to bring a relieving force of tears to help the
nightmare-haunted woman in her battle with the past?
As for Mo, his threat towards this convicted miscreant had no connection
with his recent interview with his police-officer friend--no hint of
appeal to Law and Order. The anger that burnt in his heart and sent the
blood to his head was as unsullied, as pure, as any that ever Primeval
Man sharpened flints to satisfy before Law and Order were invented.