THE LETTER GWEN WROTE TO MR. TORRENS, TO TELL OF IT. MATILDA, WHO
PLAYED SCALES, BUT NOT "THE HARMONIOUS BLACKSMITH." THE OLD LADY'S
JEALOUSY OF GRANNY MARROWBONE, AND DAVE'S FIDELITY TO BOTH. HOW
BEHEMOTH HICCUPPED, AND DAVE WENT TO SEE WHAT WAS BROKEN. THE
EARTHQUAKE AT PISA. IT WAS OWING TO THE REPAIRS. HOW PETER JACKSON
APPEARED BY MAGIC. HOW MR. BARTLETT SHORED NO. 7 UP TEMPORY, AND
THE TENANTS HAD TO MAKE THE BEST OF WHAT WAS LEFT OF IT. UNCLE MO's
ENFORCED BACHELOR LIFE
If love-letters were not so full of their writers' mutual satisfaction
with their position, what a resource amatory correspondence would be to
history!
In the letters to her lover with which Gwen at this time filled every
available minute, the amatory passages were kept in check by the hard
condition that they had to be read aloud to their blind recipient. So
much so that the account which she wrote to him of her visit to Sapps
Court will be very little the shorter for their complete omission.
It begins with a suggestion of suppressed dithyrambics, the suppression
to be laid to the door of Irene. But with sympathy for her, too--for how
can she help it? It then gets to business. She is going to tell "the
thing"--spoken of thus for the first time--in her own way, and to take
her own time about it. It is not even to be read fast, but in a
leisurely way; and, above all, Irene is not to look on ahead to see what
is coming; or, at least, if she does she is not to tell. Quite enough
for the present that he should know that she, Gwen, has escaped without
a scratch, though dusty. She addresses her lover, most unfairly, as "Mr.
Impatience," in a portion of the letter that seems devised expressly to
excite its reader's curiosity to the utmost. The fact is that this young
beauty, with all her inherent stability and strength of character, was
apt to be run away with by impish proclivities, that any good, serious
schoolgirl would have been ashamed of. This letter offered her a rare
opportunity for indulging them. Let it tell its own tale, even though we
begin on the fifth page.
"I must pause now to see what sort of a bed Lutwyche has managed to
arrange for me, and ring Maggie up if it isn't comfortable. Not but what
I am ready to rough it a little, rather than that the old lady should be
moved. She is the dearest old thing that ever was seen, with the
loveliest silver hair, and must have been surpassingly beautiful, I
should say. She keeps on reminding me of someone, and I can't tell who.
It may be Daphne Palliser's grandmother-in-law, or it may be old Madame
Edelweissenstein, who's a _chanoinesse_. But the nice old lady on the
farm I told you of keeps mixing herself up in it--and really all old
ladies are very much alike. By-the-by, I haven't explained her yet.
Don't be in such a hurry!... There now!--my bed's all right, and I
needn't fidget. Clo says so. The old lady is asleep with a stayed pulse,
says Dr. Dalrymple, who has just gone. And anything more beautiful than
that silver hair in the moonlight I never saw. Now I really must begin
at the beginning.
"Clo and I started on our pilgrimage to Sapps Court at half-past three,
without the barest suspicion of anything pending, least of all what I'm
going to tell. Go on. We left Mr. Percival Pellew on the doorstep,
pretending he was going to leave a book for Aunt Constance, and go away.
Such fun! He went upstairs and stopped two hours, and I do believe
they've got to some sort of decorous trothplight. Only A. C. when
accused, only says he has shown unmistakable evidence of something or
other, I forget what. Why on earth need people be such fools? There they
both _are_, and what more _can_ they want? She admits, however, that
there is 'no engagement'! When anybody says _that_, it means they've
been kissing. You ask Irene if it doesn't. Any female, I mean. Now go
on.
"A more secluded little corner of the world than Sapps Court I never
saw! Clo's barouche shot us out at the head of the street it turns out
of, and went to leave a letter at St. John's Wood and be back in half an
hour. We had no idea of a visitation, then. Besides, Clo had to be at
Down Street at half-past five. There is an arch you go in by, and we
nearly stuck and could go neither way. I was sorry to find the houses
looked so respectable, but Clo tells me she can take me to some much
better ones near Drury Lane. Dave, the boy, and his Uncle and Aunt, and
a little sister, Dolly, whom I nearly ate, live in the last house down
the Court. When we arrived Dolly was watering a sunflower, almost
religiously, in the front-garden eight feet deep. It would die vethy
thoon, she said, if neglected. She told us a long screed, about Heaven
knows what--I think it related to the sunflower, which a naughty boy had
chopped froo wiv a knife, and Dave had tighted on, successfully.
"The old prizefighter is just like Dr. Johnson, and I thought he was
going to hug Clo, he was so delighted to see her, and so affectionate.
So was Aunt Maria, a good woman who has lost her looks, but who must
have had some, twenty years ago. I got Dolly on my knee, and _we_ did
the hugging, Dolly telling me secrets deliciously, and tickling. She is
four next birthday, a fact which Aunt Maria thought should have produced
a sort of what the _Maestro_ calls _precisione_. I preferred Dolly as
she was, and we exchanged locks of hair.
"We had only been there a very short time when Uncle Moses suggested
that Dave should fetch a letter he was writing, from 'Old Mrs.
Prichard's Room' upstairs, and Dave--who is a dear little chap of six or
seven or eight--rushed upstairs to get it. I forgot how much I told you
about the family, but I know I said something in yesterday's letter.
Anyhow, 'old Mrs. Prichard' was not new to me, and I was very curious to
see her. So when more than five minutes had passed and no Dave
reappeared, I proposed that Dolly and I should go up to look for him,
and we went, Aunt Maria following in our wake, to cover contingencies.
She went back, after introducing me to the very sweet old lady in a
high-backed chair, who comes in as the explanation of the beginning of
this illegible scrawl. How funny children are! I do believe Uncle Moses
was right when he said that Dave, if anything, preferred his loves to be
'a bit elderly.' I am sure these babies see straight through wrinkles
and decay and toothless gums to the burning soul the old shell
imprisons, and love it. Do you recollect that picture in the Louvre we
both had seen, and thought the same about?--the old man with the sweet
face and the appalling excrescence on the nose, and the little boy's
unflinching love as he looks up at him. Oh, that nose!!! However, there
is nothing of that in old Mrs. Picture, as Dave called her, according to
her own spelling. _Her_ face is simply perfect.... There!--I went in to
look at it again by the moonlight, and I was quite right. And as for her
wonderful old white hair!... I could write for ever about her.
"I think our incursion must have frightened the old soul, because she
had lived up there by herself, except for her woman-friend who is out
all day, and Aunt Maria and the children now and then, since she came to
the house; so that a perfect stranger rushing in lawlessly--well, can't
you fancy? However, she really stood it very well, considering.
"'I have heard of you, ma'am, from Dave. He's told me all about your
rings. Where is the boy?... Haven't you, Dave--told me all about the
lady's rings?'
"Dave came from some absorbing interest at the window, to say:--'It
wasn't her,' with a sweet, impressive candour. He went back immediately.
Something was going on outside. I explained, as I was sharp enough to
guess, that my mother was the lady with the rings. I got into
conversation with the old lady, and we soon became friends. She was very
curious about 'old Mrs. Marrable' in the country. Indeed, I believe
Uncle Mo was not far wrong when he said she was as jealous as any
schoolgirl. It is most amusing, the idea of these two octogenarians
falling out over this small bone of contention!
"While we talked, Dave and Dolly looked out of the window, Dave
constantly supplying bulletins of the something that was going on
without. I could not make it out at first, and his interjections of 'Now
she's took it off'--'Now she's put it on again'--made me think he was
inspecting some lady who was 'trying on' in the opposite house. It
appeared, however, that the thing that was taken off and put on was not
a dress, but some sort of plaister or liniment applied to the face of a
boy, the miscreant who had made a raid on Dave's garden that morning,
and spoiled his sunflower (see _ante_). It was because Dave had become
so engrossed in this that he had not come downstairs again with his
letter.
"The old lady, I am happy to say, was most amiable, and took to me
immensely. I couldn't undertake to say now exactly how we got on such
good terms so quickly. We agreed about the wickedness of that boy,
especially when Dave reported ingratitude on his part towards the
sister, who was tending him, whom he smacked and whose hair he pulled.
To think of his smacking that dear girl that played the piano so nicely
all day! And pulling her back-tails so she called out when she was
actually succouring his lacerated face. I gathered that her name may
have been Matilda, and that she wore plaits.
"'I think her such a nice, dear girl,' said old Mrs. Picture--I like
that name for her--'because she plays the piano all day long, and I sit
here and listen, and think of old times.' I asked a question. 'Why, no,
my dear!--I can't say she knows any tunes. But she plays her scales all
day, very nicely, and makes me think of when my sister and I played
scales--oh, so many years ago! But we played tunes too. I sometimes
think I could teach her "The Harmonious Blacksmith," if only we was a
bit nearer.' I could see in her old face that she was back in the Past,
listening to a memory. How I wished I had a piano to play 'The
Harmonious Blacksmith' for her again!
"I got her somehow to talk of herself and her antecedents, but rather
stingily. She married young and went abroad, but she seemed not to want
to talk about this. I could not press her. She had come back home--from
wherever she was--many years after her husband's death, with an only
son, the survivor of a family of four children. He was a man, not a boy;
at least, he married a year or so after. She 'could not say that he was
dead.' Otherwise, she knew of no living relative. Her means of
livelihood was an annuity 'bought by my poor son before....'--before
something she either forgot to tell, or fought shy of--the last, I
think. 'I'm very happy up here,' she said. 'Only I might not be, if I
was one of those that wanted gaiety. Mrs. Burr she lives with me, and it
costs her no rent, and she sees to me. And my children--I call 'em
mine--come for company, 'most every day. Don't you, Dave?'
"Dave tore himself away from the pleasing spectacle of his enemy in
hospital, and came to confirm this. 'Yorce!' said he, with emphasis. 'Me
and Dolly!' He recited rapidly all the days of the week, an appointment
being imputed to each. But he weakened the force of his rhetoric by
adding:--'Only not some of 'em always!' Mrs. Picture then said:--'But
you love your old granny in the country better than you do me, don't
you, Davy dear?' Whereupon Dave shouted with all his voice:--'I
_doesn't_!' and flushed quite red, indignantly.
"The old lady then said, most unfairly:--'Then which do you love best,
dear child? Because you must love _one_ best, you know!' I thought
Dave's answer ingenious:--'I loves whichever it _is_, best.' If only all
young men were as candid about their loves, wouldn't they say the same?
"Dolly had picked up the recitation of the days of the week for her own
private use, and was repeating it _ad libitum_ in a melodious undertone,
always becoming louder on Flyday, Tackyday, Tunday. She was hanging over
the window-sill watching the surgical case opposite. How glad I am now
when I recollect my impulse to catch the little maid and keep her on my
knee! Dolly's good Angel prompted this, and had a hand in my inspiration
to tell the story of Cinderella, with occasional refrains of song which
I do believe old Mrs. Picture enjoyed as much as the two smalls. I
shudder as I think what it would have been if they had still been at the
window when it came--the thing I have been so long postponing.
"It came without any warning that it would have been possible to act
upon. We might certainly have shouted to those below to stand clear, _if
we had ourselves understood_. But how _could_ we? You can have no idea
how bewildering it was.
"When something you can't explain portends Heavens-know-what, what
on earth can you do? Pretend it's ghosts, and very curious and
interesting? I think I might have done so this time, when an alarming
noise set all our nerves on the jar. It was not a noise capable of
description--something like Behemoth hiccuping goes nearest. Only I
didn't want to frighten the babies, so I said nothing about the ghosts.
Dolly said it wasn't her--an obvious truth. Old Mrs. Picture said it
must have been her chair--an obvious fallacy. She then deserted her
theory and suggested that Dave should 'go down and see if anything was
broken,' which Dave immediately started to do, much excited.
"I felt very uncomfortable and creepy, for it recalled the shock of
earthquake Papa and I were in at Pisa two years ago--it is a feeling one
never gets over, that _terremotitis_, as Papa called it. I believe I was
more alarmed than Dolly, and as for Dave, I am sure that so far he
thought the whole thing the best fun imaginable. Picture to yourself, as
he slams the door behind him and shouts his message to the world below,
that I remain seated facing the light, while Dolly on my knee listens
to a postscript of Cinderella. My eyes are fixed on the beauty of the
old side-face I see against the light. Get this image clear, and then I
will tell you what followed.
"Even as I sat looking at the old lady, that noise came again, and
plaster came tumbling down from the ceiling, obscuring the window
behind. As I fixed my eyes upon it, falling, I saw beyond it what really
made me think at first that I was taking leave of my senses. The houses
opposite seemed to shoot straight up into the air, as though they were
reflections in a mirror which had fallen forward. An instant after, I
saw what had happened. It was the window that was moving, not the
houses.
"It was so odd! I had time to see all this and change my mind, before
the great crash came to explain what had happened. For until the roar of
a cataract of disintegrated brickwork, followed by a cloud of choking
dust, showed that the wall of the room had fallen outwards, leaving the
world clear cut and visible under a glorious afternoon sky until that
dust-cloud came and veiled it, I could not have said what the thing was,
or why. There seemed to be time--good solid time!--between the sudden
day-blaze and the crash below, and I took advantage of it to wonder what
on earth was happening.
"Then I knew it all in an instant, and saw in another instant that the
ceiling was sagging down; for aught I knew, under the weight of a
falling roof.
"Old Mrs. Picture was not frightened at all. 'You get this little Dolly
safe, my dear,' said she to me. 'I can get myself as far as the landing.
But don't you fret about me. I'm near my time.' She seemed quite alive
to the fact that the house was falling, but at eighty, what did that
matter? She added quite quietly:--'It's owing to the repairs.' Dolly
suddenly began to weep, panic-struck.
"I saw that Mrs. Picture could not rise from her chair, though she
tried. But what could I do? Any attempt of mine to pick her up and carry
her would only have led to delay. I saw it would be quicker to get help,
and ran for it, overtaking Dave on the stairs.
"Below was chaos. The kitchen where I had left my cousin talking with
Uncle Mo and Aunt Maria was all but darkened, and the place was a cloud
of dust. I could see that Uncle Mo was wrenching open the street-door,
which seemed to have stuck, and then that it opened, letting in an
avalanche of rubbish, and some light. Cries came from outside, and Aunt
Maria called out that it was Mrs. Burr. Thereon Uncle Mo, crying 'Stand
clear, all!' began flinging the rubbish back into the room with
marvellous alacrity for a man of his years, and no consideration at all
for glass or crockery. I felt sick, you may fancy, when it came home to
me that someone was crying aloud with pain, buried under that heap of
fallen brickwork.
"But we could be of no use yet a while, so I told Clo and Aunt Maria to
come upstairs and help to get the old lady down. They did as they were
bid, being, in fact, terrified out of their wits, and quite unable to
make suggestions. A male voice came from within the room where I had
just left Mrs. Picture by herself. I took it quite as a matter of
course.
"'You keep out on that landing, some of you, till I tell you to come in.
This here floor won't carry more than my weight.' This was what I heard
a man say, speaking from where the window had been, mysteriously. I was
aware that he had stepped from some ladder on to the floor of the room,
jumping on it recklessly as though to test its bearing power. Then that
he had gathered up my old new acquaintance in a bundle, carefully made
in a few seconds, and had said:--'Come along down!' to all whom it might
concern. He shepherded us, all three women and the two children, into a
back-bedroom below, and went away, leaving his bundle on the bed;
saying, after glancing round at the cornice:--'You'll be safe enough
here for a bit, just till we can see our way.' He had a peculiar hat or
cap, and I saw that he was a fireman. I did not know that firemen held
any intercourse with human creatures. It appears that they do
occasionally, under reserves.
"Then it was that I became alarmed about my old lady. Her face had lost
what colour it had, and her finger-tips had become blue and lifeless.
But she spoke, faintly enough, although quite clearly, always urging us
to go to a safer place, and leave her to her luck. This was, of course,
nonsense. Nor was there any safer place to go to, so far as I understood
the position. Aunt Maria went down to find brandy, if possible, in the
heart of the confusion below. She found half a wineglassful somewhere,
and brought back with it a report of progress. They had to be cautious
in removing the rubbish, so that no worse should come to the sufferer it
had half buried. We kept it from the old lady that this was her
fellow-lodger, Mrs. Burr, and made her take some brandy, whether she
liked it or no. I then went down to see for myself, and Clo came too.
"The police had taken prompt possession of the Court, and only a
limited force of volunteers were allowed to share in the removal of the
rubbish. Uncle Mo and the fireman, who seemed to be a personal friend,
were attacking the ruin from within, throwing the loose bricks back into
the kitchen, and working for the dear life.
"As we came in they halted, in obedience to, 'Easy a minute, you inside
there. Gently does it,' from the spontaneous leading mind, whoever he
was, without. Uncle Mo, streaming with perspiration, and forgetful of
social niceties, turned to me saying:--'You go back, my dear, you go
back! 'Tain't for you to see. You go back!' I replied:--'Nonsense, Mr.
Wardle! What do you take me for?' For had I not stood beside _you_, my
darling, when you lay dead in the Park?
"I could see what had taken place. The woman had been just about to
knock at the door when the wall fell from above. Nothing had struck her
direct, else she would almost surely have been killed. The ruin had
fallen far enough from the house to avoid this, but the recoil of its
disintegration (I'm so proud of that expression) had jammed her against
the wall and choked the door.... I'm so sleepy I can't write another
word."
* * * * *
No doubt the sequel described how Mrs. Burr, rescued alive, but
insensible, was borne away on a stretcher to the Hospital, and how the
party were released from the house, whose complete collapse must have
presented itself to their excited imaginations as more than a
possibility. No doubt also obscure points were made plain; as, for
instance, the one which is prominent in the short newspaper report,
which runs as follows:--"A singular fall of brickwork, the consequences
of which might easily have proved fatal, occurred on Thursday last at
Sapps Court, Marylebone, when the greater part of the front-wall of No.
7 fell forward into the street, blocking the main entrance and causing
for a time the greatest alarm to the inhabitants, who, however, were all
ultimately rescued uninjured. A remarkable circumstance was that the
cloud of dust raised by the shower of loose brickwork was taken for
smoke and was sufficient to cause an alarm of fire; as a matter of fact,
two engines had arrived before the circumstances were explained. The
mistake was not altogether unfortunate, as an escape ladder which was
passing at the time was of use in reaching the upper floors, whose
tenants were at one time in considerable danger. A sempstress, Mrs.
Susan Burr, living upstairs, was returning home at the moment of the
calamity, and was severely injured by the falling brickwork, but no
serious result is anticipated. A costermonger of the name of Rackstraw
also received some severe contusions, but if we may trust the report of
his son, an intelligent lad of thirteen, he is very little the worse by
his misadventure."
Although "no serious result was anticipated" in Mrs. Burr's case--in the
newspaper sense of the words, which referred to the Coroner--the results
were serious enough to Mrs. Burr. She was disabled from work
indefinitely, and was too much damaged to hope to leave the Hospital,
for weeks at any rate. A relative was found, ready to take charge of her
when that time should arrive, but apparently not ready to disclose her
own name. For, so far as can be ascertained, she was never spoken of at
Sapps Court otherwise than as "Mrs. Burr's married niece."
Mr. Bartlett was on the spot, within an hour, taking measures for the
immediate safety of the inmates, and his own ultimate pecuniary
advantage. He pointed out it was quite unnecessary for anyone to turn
out of the rooms below, although he admitted that the open air had got
through the top story. His immediate resources were quite equal to a
temporary arrangement practicable in a couple of hours or so. A
contrivance of inconceivable slightness, involving no drawbacks whatever
to families occupying the premises it was engendered in, was necessary
to hold the roof up tempory, for fear it should come with a run. It was
really a'most nothing in the manner of speaking. You just shoved a
len'th of quartering into each room, all down the house to the bottom,
with a short scaffold-board top and bottom to distribute out the weight,
and tapped 'em across with a 'ammer, and there you were! The top one
ketched the roof coming down, and you had no need to be apprehensive,
because it would take a tidy weight--double what Mr. Bartlett was going
to put upon it.
This was a security against a complete collapse of the roof and upper
floor, but if it come on heavy rain, what would keep Aunt M'riar's room
dry? She and Dolly could not sleep in a puddle. Mr. Bartlett, however,
pledged himself to make all that good with a few yards of tarpauling,
and Aunt M'riar and Dolly went to bed, with sore misgivings as to
whether they would wake alive next day. Dolly woke in the night and
screamed with terror at what she conceived was a spectre from the grave,
but which was really nothing but a short length of scaffold-pole
standing upright at the foot of her bed.
This was bad enough, but it further appeared next day that a new floor
would be _de rigueur_ overhead in Mrs. Prichard's room. Not only were
sundry timber balks shoved up against the house outside so they couldn't
constitoot a hindrance to anyone--so Mr. Bartlett said when he giv' in a
price for the job--but the street-door wouldn't above half shet to, and
all the windows had to be seen to. Add to this afflictions from
tarpaulings that would keep you bone-dry even if there come a
thunderstorm--or perhaps, properly speaking, that would have done so
only they were just a trifle wore at critical points--and smells of damp
plaster that quite took away the relish from your food, and you will
form some idea what remaining in the house during the repairs meant to
Uncle Mo and his belongings.
Not that Dolly and Dave took their sufferings to heart much. The
novelties of the position went far to compensate them for its drawbacks.
One supreme grief there was for them, certainly. The avalanche of
brickwork had destroyed, utterly and irrevocably, that cherished
sunflower. They had clung to a lingering hope that, as soon as the
claims of humanity had been discharged by the rescue of the victims of
the catastrophe, the attention of the rescuers would be directed to
carefully removing the _debris_ from above their buried treasure. They
were shocked at the callous indifference shown to its fate. It was an
early revelation of the heartlessness of mankind. Nevertheless, the
shattered sunflower was recovered in the end, and Dolly took it to bed
with her, and cried herself to sleep over it.
* * * * *
So it seemed impossible for Dave and Dolly, and their uncle and aunt,
all to remain on in the half-wrecked house. But then--where had they to
go to? It was clear that Dolly and her aunt would have to turn out, and
the only resource seemed to be that they should go away for a while to
her grandmother's, an old lady at Ealing, who existed, but went no
further. She had never entered Sapps Court, but her daughters, Aunt
M'riar and Dolly's mother, had paid her dutiful visits. There was no
ill-feeling--none whatever! So to Ealing Aunt M'riar went, two or three
days later, and Dave went too, although he was convinced Uncle Mo
couldn't do without him.
The old boy himself remained in residence, being fed by The Rising Sun;
which sounds like poetry, but relates to chops and sausages and a
half-a-pint, a monotonous dietary on which he subsisted until his family
returned a month later to a reinstated mansion. He lived a good deal at
The Sun during this period, relying on the society of his host and his
friend Jerry. His retrospective chats with the latter recorded his
impressions of the event which had deprived him of his household, and
left him a childless wanderer on the surface of Marylebone.
"Red-nosed Tommy," said he, referring to Mr. Bartlett, "he wouldn't have
put in that bit of bressemer to ketch up those rotten joists over
M'riar's room if I hadn't told him. We should just have had the floor
come through and p'r'aps my little maid and M'riar squashed dead right
off. You see, they would have took it all atop, and no mistake. Pore
Susan got it bad enough, but it wasn't a dead squelch in her case. It
come sideways." Uncle Mo emptied his pipe on the table, and thoughtfully
made the ash do duty first for Mrs. Burr, and then for Aunt M'riar and
Dolly, by means of a side-push and a top-squash with his finger. He
looked at the last result sadly as he refilled his pipe--a
hypothetically bereaved man. Dolly might have been as flat as that!
"How's Susan Burr getting on?" asked Mr. Alibone.
"That's according to how much money you're inclined to put on the
doctors. Going by looks only--what M'riar says--she don't give the idea
of coming to time. Only then, there's Sister Nora--Miss Grahame they
call her now; very nice lady--she's on the doctor's side, and says Mrs.
Burr means to pull round. Hope so!"
"How's Carrots--Carrots senior--young Radishes' dad?"
"Oh--him? _He's_ all right. He ain't the sort to take to bein' doctored.
He's getting about again."
"I thought a bit of wall came down on him."
"Came down bodily, he says. But it don't foller that it did, because he
says so. Anyhow, he got a hard corner of his nut against it. _He_ ain't
delicate. He says he'll have it out of the landlord--action for
damages--wilful neglect--'sorlt and battery--that kind o' thing!"
"Won't Mrs. Burr?"
"Couldn't say--don't know if a woman counts. But it don't matter. Sister
Nora, she'll see to _her_. Goes to see her every day. She or the other
one. I say, Jerry!..."
"What say, old Mo?"
"You haven't seen the other one."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" Mr. Jerry spoke perceptively, appreciatively.
For Uncle Mo, by partly closing one eye, and slightly varying the
expression of his lips, had contrived somehow to convey the idea that he
was speaking of dazzling beauty, not by any means unadorned.
"I tell you this, Jerry, and you can believe me or not, as you like. If
I was a young feller, I'd hang about Hy' Park all day long only to get a
squint at her. My word!--there's nothing to come anigh her--ever I saw!
And there she was, a-kissing our little Dolly, like e'er a one of us!"
"What do you make out her name to be?" said Mr. Jerry.
"Sister Nora called her _Gwen_," replied Mo, speaking the name
mechanically but firmly. "But what the long for that may be, I couldn't
say. 'Tain't Gwenjamin, anyhow." He stopped to light his pipe.
"It was this young ladyship that carried off old Prichard in a two-horse
carriage, I take it."
Uncle Mo nodded. "Round to Sister Nora's--in Cavendish Square--with a
black Statute stood upright--behind palin's. M'riar she's been round to
see the old lady there, being told to. And seemin'ly this here young
Countess"--Uncle Mo seemed to object to using this word--"she's a-going
to carry the old lady off to the Towels, where she lives when she's at
home...."
"The Towels? Are you sure it isn't _Towers_? Much more likely!"
Uncle Mo made a mental note about Jerry, that he was tainted with John
Bull's love of a lord. How could anything but a reverent study of
Debrett have given such an insight into the names of Nobs' houses? "It
don't make any odds, that I can see!" was his comment. The correction,
however, resulted in an incumbrance to his speech, as he was only half
prepared to concede the point. He continued:--"She's a-going, as I
understand from M'riar, to pack off Mrs. Prichard to this here Towels,
or Towers, accordin' as we call it. And, as I make it out, she'll keep
her there till so be as Mr. Bartlett gets through the repairs. Or she'll
send her back to a lodgin'; or not, as may be. Either, or eye-ther."
Having thus, as it were, saturated his speech with freedom of
alternative, Uncle Mo dismissed the subject, in favour of Gwen's beauty.
"But--to look at her!" said he. The old man was quite in love.
Mr. Jerry disturbed his contemplation of the image Gwen had left him.
"How long does Bartlett mean to be over the job?" he asked.
"He means to complete in a month. If you trust his word. I can't say I
do."
"When _will_ he complete, Mo? That's the question. What's the answer?"
"The Lord alone knows." Uncle Mo shook his head solemnly. But he
recalled his words. "No--He don't! Even the Devil don't know. I tell you
this, Jerry--there never was a buildin' job finished at any time spoke
of aforehand. It's always _after_ any such a time. And if you jump on
for to catch it up, it's _afterer_."
"Best to hold one's tongue about it, eh? Anyway, the old lady's got a
berth for a time. Rum story! She'd have been put to it if it hadn't been
for the turn things took. When's she to go?"
"To these here Towels, or Towers, whichever you call 'em? M'riar didn't
spot that. When she's took back, I suppose. When the young lady goes."
"What'll your young customer say to Mrs. Prichard being gone, when his
aunt brings him back?"
Uncle Mo seemed to cogitate over this. He had not perhaps been fully
alive to the disappointment in store for Dave when he came back and
found no Mrs. Picture at Sapps Court. Poor little man! The old
prizefighter's tender heart was touched on his boy's behalf. But after
all there would be worse trials than this on the rough road of life for
Dave. "He'll have to lump it, I expect, Jerry," said he. "Besides, Mrs.
P., she'll come back as soon as the new plaster's dry. She's not going
to stop at the Towels--Towers--whatever they are!--for a thousand
years."