HOW UNCLE MO MADE THE DOOR-CHAIN SECURE, AND A SUNFLOWER LOOKED ON
THE WHILE. HOW AUNT M'RIAR STOPPED HER EARS. A BIT OF UNCLE MO'S
MIND. HOW DOLLY KISSED HIM THROUGH THE DOOR-CRACK, BUT NOT MRS.
BURR. CONCERNING RATS, TO WHICH UNCLE MO TOOK THE OPPOSITE VIEW. OF
ONE, OR SOME, WHICH TRAVELLED OUT TO AUSTRALIA WITH OLD MRS.
PRICHARD. HOW DAVE MET THREE LADIES IN A CARRIAGE, NONE OF WHOM
KISSED HIM. HOW UNCLE MO WENT UPSTAIRS WITH THE CHILDREN, IN
CONNECTION WITH THE RATS HE HAD DISCREDITED, AND STAYED UP QUITE A
TIME. HOW HE INTERVIEWED MR. BARTLETT ABOUT THEM
"You're never fidgeting about _him_?" said Aunt M'riar to Uncle Mo, one
morning shortly after she had told him the story of her marriage. "He's
safe out of the way by now. You may rely on your police-inspectin'
friend to inspect _him_. Didn't he as good as say he was took, Mo?"
"That warn't precisely the exact expression used, M'riar," said Uncle
Mo, who was doing something with a tool-box at the door that opened on
the front-garden that opened on the Court. Dolly was holding his tools,
by permission--only not chisels or gouges, or gimlets, or bradawls, or
anything with an edge to it--and the sunflower outside was watching
them. Uncle Mo was extracting a screw with difficulty, in spite of the
fact that it was all but out already. He now elucidated the cause of
this difficulty, and left the Police Inspector alone. "'Tain't stuck, if
you ask me. I should say there never had been no holt to this screw from
the beginning. But by reason there's no life in the thread, it goes
round and round rayther than come out.... Got it!--wanted a little
coaxin', it did." That is to say, a few back-turns with very light
pressure brought the screw-head free enough for a finger-grip, and the
rest was easy. "It warn't of any real service," said Uncle Mo. "One size
bigger would ketch and hold in. This here one's only so much
horse-tentation. Now I can't get a bigger one through the plate, and I
can't rimer out the hole for want of a tool--not so much as a small
round file.... Here's a long 'un, of a thread with the first. He'll
ketch in if there's wood-backin' enough.... That's got him! Now it'll
take a Hemperor, to get _that_ out." Uncle Mo paused to enjoy a moment's
triumph, then harked back:--"No--the precise expression made use of was,
they might put their finger on him any minute."
"Which don't mean the same thing," said Aunt M'riar.
"No more it don't, M'riar, now you mention it. But he won't trust his
nose down this Court. If he does, and I ain't here, just you do like I
tell you...."
Aunt M'riar interrupted. "I couldn't find it in me to give him up, Mo.
Not for all I'm worth!" She spoke in a quick undertone, with a stress in
her voice that terrified Dolly, who nearly let go a hammer she had been
allowed to hold, as harmless.
"Not if you knew what he's wanted for, this time?"
"Don't you tell me, Mo. I'd soonest know nothing.... No--no--don't you
tell me a word about it!" And Aunt M'riar clapped her hands on her ears,
leaving an iron, that she had been trying to abate to a professional
heat, to make a brown island on its flannel zone of influence. All her
colour--she had a fair share of it--had gone from her cheeks, and Dolly
was in two minds whether she should drop the hammer and weep.
Uncle Mo's reassuring voice decided her to do neither, this time. "Don't
you be frightened, M'riar," said he. "I wasn't for telling you his last
game. Nor it wouldn't be any satisfaction to tell. I was only going to
say that if he was to turn up in these parts, just you put the chain
down--it's all square and sound now--and tell him he'll find me at The
Sun." He closed the door and put the chain he had been revising on its
mettle; adding as he did so, in defiance of Astronomy:--"'Tain't any so
far off, The Sun." Dolly's amusement at the function of the chain, and
its efficacy, was so great as to cause her aunt to rule, as a point of
Law, that six times was plenty for any little girl, and that she must
leave her uncle a minute's peace.
Dolly granting this, Aunt M'riar took advantage of it, to ask what
course Uncle Mo would pursue, if she complied with his instructions. "If
you gave him up to the Police, Mo," she said, "and I'd sent him to you,
it would be all one as if I'd done it."
"I'll promise not to give him to the Police, if he comes to me off of
your sending, M'riar. In course, if he's only himself to thank for
coming my way, that's another pair of shoes."
"But if it was me, what'll you do, Mo?" Aunt M'riar wasn't getting on
with those cuffs.
"What'll I do? Maybe I'll give him ... a bit of my mind."
"No--what'll you do, Mo?" There was a new apprehension in her voice as
she dropped it to say:--"He's a younger man than you, by nigh twenty
years."
The anticipation of that bit of Uncle Mo's mind had gripped his jaw and
knitted his brow for an instant. It vanished, and left both free as he
answered:--"You be easy, old girl! I won't give him a chance to do _me_
no harm." Aunt M'riar bent a suspicious gaze on him for a moment, but it
ended as an even more than usually genial smile spread over the old
prizefighter's face, and he gave way to Dolly's request to be sut out
only dest this once more; which ended in a Pyramus and Thisbe
accommodation of kisses through as much thoroughfare as the chain
permitted. They were painful and dangerous exploits; but it was not on
either of those accounts that Mrs. Burr, coming home rather early,
declined to avail herself of Dolly's suggestion that she also should
take advantage of this rare opportunity for uncomfortable endearments;
but rather in deference to public custom, whose rules about kissing
Dolly thought ridiculous.
The door having to be really shut to release the chain, its reopening
seemed to inaugurate a new chapter, at liberty to ignore Dolly's
flagrant suggestions at the end of the previous one. Besides, it was
possible for Uncle Mo to affect ignorance; as, after all, Dolly was
outside. Mrs. Burr did not tax him with insincerity, and the subject
dropped, superseded by less interesting matter.
"I looked in to see," said Aunt M'riar, replying to a question of Mrs.
Burr's. "The old lady was awake and knitting, last time. First time
she'd the paper on her knee, open. Next time she was gone off sound."
"That's her way, ma'am. Off and on--on and off. But she takes mostly to
the knitting. And it ain't anything to wonder at, I say, that she drops
off reading. I'm sure I can't hold my eyes open five minutes over the
newspaper. And books would be worse, when you come to read what's wrote
in them, if it wasn't for having to turn over the leaves. Because you're
bound to see where, and not turn two at once, or it don't follow on."
Aunt M'riar and Uncle Mo confirmed this view from their own experience.
It was agreed further that small type--Parliamentary debates and the
like--was more soporific than large, besides spinning out the length and
deferring the relaxation of turning over, when in book-form. Short
accidents, and not too prolix criminal proceedings were on the whole
the most palatable forms of literature. It was not to be wondered at
that old Mrs. Prichard should go to sleep over the newspaper at her age,
seeing that none but the profoundest scholars could keep awake for five
minutes while perusing it. The minute Dave came in from school he should
take Dolly upstairs to pay the old lady a visit, and brighten her up a
bit.
"Very like she's been extra to-day"--thus Mrs. Burr continued--"by
reason of rats last night, and getting no sleep."
"There ain't any rats in your room, missis," said Uncle Mo. "We should
hear 'em down below if there was."
"What it is if it ain't rats passes me then, Mr. Wardle. I do assure you
there was a loud crash like a gun going off, and we neither of us hardly
got any sleep after."
"Queer, anyhow!" said Uncle Mo. But he evidently doubted the statement,
or at least thought it exaggerated.
"I'll be glad to tell her you take the opposite view to rats, Mr.
Moses," said Mrs. Burr. "For it sets her on fretting when she gets
thinking back. And now she'll never be tired of telling about the rats
on the ship when she was took out to Australia. Running over her face,
and starting her awake in the night! It gives the creeps only to hear."
"There, Dolly, now you listen to how the rats run about on Mrs. Picture
when she was on board of the ship." Thus Aunt M'riar, always with that
haunting vice of perverting Art, Literature, Morals, and Philosophy to
the oppressive improvement of the young. She seldom scored a success,
and this time she was hoisted with her own petard. For Dolly jumped with
delight at the prospect of a romance of fascinating character, combining
Zoology and Travel. She applied for a place to hear it, on the knee of
Mrs. Burr, who, however, would have had to sit down to supply it. So she
was forced to be content with a bald version of the tale, as Mrs. Burr
had to see to getting their suppers upstairs. She was rather
disappointed at the size and number of the rats. She enquired:--"Was
they large rats, or small?" and would have preferred to hear that they
were about the size of small cats--not larger, for fear of
inconveniencing old Mrs. Picture. And a circumstance throwing doubt on
their number was unwelcome to her. For it appeared that old Mrs. Picture
slept with her fellow-passengers in a dark cabin, and no one might light
a match all night for fear of the Captain. And rats ran over those
passengers' faces! But it may have been all the same rat, and to Dolly
that seemed much less satisfactory than troops. She was rather cast
down about it, but there was no need to discourage Dave. She could
invent some extra rats, when he came back from school.
* * * * *
Lay down the book, you who read, and give but a moment's thought to the
strangeness of these two episodes, over half a century apart. One, in
the black darkness of an emigrant's sleeping-quarters on a ship
outward-bound, all its tenants huddled close in the stifling air; child
and woman, weak and strong, sick and healthy even, penned in alike to
sleep their best on ranks of shelves, a mere packed storage of human
goods, to be delivered after long months of battle with the seas, ten
thousand miles from home. Or, if you shrink from the thought that
Maisie's luck on her first voyage was so cruel as that, conceive her
interview with those rodent fellow-passengers as having taken place in
the best quarters money could buy on such a ship--and what would _they_
be, against a good steerage-berth nowadays?--and give her, at least, a
couch to herself. Picture her, if you will, at liberty to start from it
in terror and scramble up a companion ladder to an open deck, and pick
her way through shrouds and a bare headway of restless sprits above, and
Heaven knows what of coiled cordage and inexplicable bulkhead underfoot,
to some haven where a merciful old mariner, alone upon his watch, shuts
his eyes to his duty and tolerates the beautiful girl on deck, when he
is told by her that she cannot sleep for the rats. Make the weather
fair, to keep the picture at its best, and let her pass the hours till
the coming of the dawn, watching the mainmast-truck sway to and fro
against the Southern Cross, as the breeze falls and rises, and the
bulwark-plash is soft or loud upon the waters.
And then--all has vanished! That was half a century ago, and more. And a
very little girl with very blue eyes and a disgracefully rough shock of
golden curls has just been told of those rats, and has resolved to add
to their number--having power to do so, like a Committee--when she comes
to retell the tale to her elder brother; and then they will both--and
this is the strangest of all!--they will both go and make a noisy and
excited application to an authority to have it confirmed or
contradicted. And this authority will be that girl who sat on that deck
beneath the stars, and listened to the bells sounding the hours through
the night, to keep the ship's time for a forgotten crew, on a ship that
may have gone to the bottom many a year ago, on its return voyage home
perhaps--who knows?
Before Dave heard Dolly's version of the rats, he had a tale of his own
to tell, coming in just after Mrs. Burr had departed. As he was excited
by the event he was yearning to narrate, he did not put it so lucidly as
he might have done. He said:--"Oy saw the lady, and another lady, and
another lady, all in one carriage. And they see me. And the lady"--he
still pronounced this word _loydy_--"she see me on the poyvement, and
'Stop' she says. And then she says, 'You're Doyvy, oyn't you, that had
the ax-nent?' I says these was my books I took to scrool...."
"Didn't you _say_ you was Davy?" said Uncle Mo. And Aunt M'riar she
actually said:--"Well, I never!--not to tell the lady who you was!"
Dave was perplexed, looking with blue-eyed gravity from one to the
other. "The loydy said I _was_ Doyvy," said he, in a slightly injured
tone. He did not at all like the suggestion that he had been guilty of
discourtesy.
"In course the lady knew, and knew correct," said Uncle Mo, drawing a
distinction which is too often overlooked. "Cut along and tell us some
more. What more did the lady say?"
Dave concentrated his intelligence powerfully on accuracy:--"The loydy
said to the yuther loydy--the be-yhooterful loydy...."
"Oh, there was a beautiful lady, was there?"
Dave nodded excessively, and continued:--"Said here's a friend of mine,
Doyvy Wardle, and they was coming to poy a visit to, to-morrow
afternoon."
"And what did the other lady say?"
Dave gathered himself together for an effort of intense fidelity:--"She
said--she said--'He's much too dirty to kiss in the open street'--she
said, 'and better not to touch.' Yorce!" He seemed magnanimous towards
Gwen, in spite of her finical delicacy.
Aunt M'riar turned his face to the light, by the chin. "What's the child
been at?" said she.
"The boys had some corks," was Dave's explanation. Nothing further
seemed to be required; Uncle Mo merely remarking: "It'll come off with
soap." However, there was some doubt about the identity of these
carriage ladies. Was one of them the original lady of the rings; who had
taken Dave for a drive or _vice versa_. "Not her!" said Dave; and went
on shaking his head so long to give his statement weight, that Aunt
M'riar abruptly requested him to stop, as her nervous system could not
bear the strain. It was enough, she said, to make her eyes come out by
the roots.
"She must have been somebody else. She couldn't have been nobody," said
Uncle Mo cogently. "Spit it out, old chap, Who was she?"
It was easy to say who she was; the strain of attestation had turned on
who she wasn't. Dave became fluent:--"Whoy, the loydy what was a
cistern, and took me in the roylwoy troyne and in the horse-coach to
Granny Marrowbone." For he had never quite dissociated Sister Nora from
ball-taps and plumbings. He added after reflection:--"Only not dressed
up like then!"
At this point Dolly, whose preoccupation about those rats had stood,
between her and a reasonable interest in Dave's adventure, struck in
noisily and rudely with disjointed particulars about them, showing a
poor capacity for narrative, and provoking Uncle Mo to tickling her with
a view to their suppression. Aunt M'riar seized the opportunity to
capture Dave and subject him to soap and water at the sink.
As soon as the boys' corks, or the effect of using them after ignition
as face-pigments, had become a thing of the past, Dave and Dolly were
ready to pay their promised visit to Mrs. Prichard. Uncle Mo suggested
that he might act as their convoy as far as the top-landing. This was a
departure from precedent, as stair-climbing was never very welcome to
Uncle Mo. But Aunt M'riar consented, the more readily that she was all
behind with her work. Uncle Mo not only went up with the children, but
stayed up quite a time with the old lady and Mrs. Burr. When he came
down he did not refer to his conversation with them, but went back to
Dave's encounter with his aristocratic friends in the street.
"The lady that sighted our boy out," said he, "she'll be Miss
What's-her-name that come on at the Hospital--her with the clean white
tucker...." This referred to a vaguely recollected item of the costume
in which Sister Nora was dressed up at the time of Dave's accident. It
had lapsed, as inappropriate, during her nursing of her father in
Scotland, and had not been resumed.
"That's her," said Aunt M'riar. "Sister of Charity--that's what _she_
is. The others are ladyships, one or both. They all belong." The tone of
remoteness might have been adopted in speaking of inhabitants of Mars
and Venus.
"I thought her the right sort, herself," said Uncle Mo, implying that
others of her _monde_ might be safely assumed to be the wrong sort,
pending proof of the contrary. "Anyways, she's coming to pay Dave a
visit, and I'll be glad of a sight of her, for one!"
"Oh, I've no fault to find, Mo, if that's what you mean." Aunt M'riar
was absorbed in her mystery, doing justice to what was probably a lady's
nightgear, of imperial splendour. So she probably had spoken rather at
random; and, indeed, seemed to think apology necessary. She took
advantage of the end of an episode to say, while contemplating the
perfection of two unimpeachable cuffs:--"So long as the others don't
give theirselves no airs." Isolated certainly, as to structure; but,
after all, has speech any use except to communicate ideas?
Uncle Mo presumably understood, as he accepted the form of speech,
saying:--"And so long as we do ourselves credit, M'riar."
"Well, Mo, you never see me do anything but behave."
"That I never did, M'riar. Right you are!" Which ended a little colloquy
that contained or implied a protest against the compulsory association
of classes, expressed to a certain extent by special leniency towards an
exceptional approach from without. Having entered his own share of the
protest, Uncle Mo announced his intention of seeking Mr. Bartlett the
builder, to speak to him about them rats. This saying Aunt M'riar did
not even condemn as enigmatical, so completely did all that relates to
buildings lie outside her jurisdiction.
"I've got my 'ands so full just now," said Mr. Bartlett, when Uncle Mo
had explained the object of his visit, "or I'd step round to cast an eye
on that bressumer. Only you may make your mind easy, and say I told you
to it. If we was all of us to get into a perspiration whenever a board
creaked or a bit of loose parging come down a chimley, we shouldn't have
a minute's peace of our lives. Some parties is convinced of Ghosts the
very first crack! Hysterical females in partic'lar." Mr. Bartlett did
not seem busy, externally; but he contrived to give an impression that
he was attending to a job at Buckingham Palace.
Uncle Mo felt abashed at his implied rebuke. It was not deserved, for he
was guiltless of superstition. However, he had accepted the position of
delegate of the top-floor, which, of course, was an hysterical floor,
owing to the sex of its tenants. For Mr. Bartlett's meaning was the
conventional one, that all women were hysterical, not some more than
others. Uncle Mo felt that his position was insecure; and that he had
better retire from it. Noises, he conceded, was usually nothing at all;
but he had thought he would mention them, in this case.
Mr. Bartlett professed himself sincerely obliged to all persons who
would mention noises, in spite of their equivocal claims to existence.
It might save a lot of trouble in the end, and you never knew. As soon
as he had a half an hour to spare he would give attention. Till Tuesday
he was pretty well took up. No one need fidget himself about the noises
he mentioned; least of all need the landlord be communicated with, as he
was not a Practical Man, but in Independent Circumstances. Moreover, he
lived at Brixton.