HOW GWEN GOT AT MRS. PRICHARD's HISTORY, OR SOME OF IT. ONE CRIME
MORE OF HER SON'S. THE WALLS OF TROY, AND THOSE OF SAPPS COURT.
AUNT M'RIAR'S VISIT OF INSPECTION. HOW SHE CALLED ON MRS.
RAGSTROAR, WHO SENT HER SECRETIVE SON ROUND. HIS MESSAGE FROM MR.
WIX. WHO WAS COMING TO SEE HIS MOTHER, UNLESS SHE WAS SOMEBODY
ELSE. A MESSAGE TO MR. WIX, UNDERTAKEN BY MICHAEL. UNCLE MO's JOY
AT THE PROSPECT OF DAVE AND DOLLY
How very improbable the Actual would sometimes feel, were it not for our
knowledge of the events which led up to it!
Nothing could have been more improbable _per se_ than that old Mrs.
Prichard, upstairs at No. 7, down Sapps Court, should become the guest
of the Earl and Countess of Ancester, at The Towers in Rocestershire.
But a number of improbable antecedent events combined to make it
possible, and once its possibility was established, it only needed one
more good substantial improbability to make it actual. Gwen's
individuality was more than enough to supply this. But just think what
a succession of coincidences and strange events had preceded the demand
for it!
To our thinking the New Mud wanted for Dave's _barrage_ was responsible
for the whole of it. But for that New Mud, Dave would not have gone to
the Hospital. But for the Hospital, he would never have excited a tender
passion in the breast of Sister Nora; would never have visited Granny
Marrowbone; would never have been sought for by The Aristocracy at his
residence in Sapps Court. Some may say that at this point nothing else
would have occurred but for the collapse of Mr. Bartlett's brickwork,
and that therefore the rarity of sound bricks in that conglomerate was
the _vera causa_ of the events that followed. But why not equally the
imperfection of old Stephen's aim at Achilles? If he had killed
Achilles, it is ten to one Gwen would have gone abroad with her mother,
instead of being spirited away to Cavendish Square by her cousin in
order that she should thereby become entangled in slums. Or for that
matter, why not the death of the Macganister More? Had he been living
still, Cousin Clo would never have visited Ancester Towers at all.
No--no! Depend upon it, it was the New Mud. But then, Predestination
would have been dreadfully put out of temper if, instead of imperious
impulsive Gwen, ruling the roast and the boiled, and the turbot with
_mayonnaise_, and everything else for that matter, some young woman who
could be pulverised by a reproof for Quixotism had been her understudy
for the part, and she herself had had mumps or bubonic plague at the
time of the accident. In that case Predestination would hardly have
known which way to turn, to get at some sort of compromise or
accommodation that would square matters. For there can be no reasonable
doubt that what did take place was quite in order, and that--broadly
speaking--everyone had signed his name over the pencil marks, and filled
in his witness's name and residence, in the Book of Fate. If Gwen's
understudy had been called on, there would have been--to borrow a
favourite expression of Uncle Mo's--a pretty how-do-you-do, on the part
of Predestination.
Fortunately no such thing occurred, and Predestination's powers of
evasion were not put to the test. The Decrees of Fate were fulfilled as
usual, and History travelled on the line of least resistance, to the
great gratification of The Thoughtful Observer. In the case of lines of
compliance with the will of Gwen, there was no resistance at all. Is
there ever any, when a spoiled young beauty is ready to kiss the
Arbiters of Destiny as a bribe, rather than give way about a whim,
reasonable or unreasonable?
And, after all, so many improbabilities having converged towards
creating the situation, there was nothing so very unreasonable in Gwen's
whim that old Mrs. Picture should go back with her to the Towers. It was
only the natural solution of a difficulty in a conjunction of
circumstances which could not have varied materially, unless Gwen and
her cousin had devolved the charge of the old lady on some
Institution--say the Workhouse Infirmary--or a neighbour, or had
forsaken her altogether. They preferred carrying her off, as the story
has seen, in a semi-insensible state from the shock, to their haven in
Cavendish Square. Next day an arrangement was made which restored to
Gwen--who had slept on a sofa, when she was not writing the letter
quoted in the foregoing text--the couch she had insisted on dedicating
to "Old Mrs. Picture," as she continued to call her.
* * * * *
It was very singular that Gwen, who had seen the old twin sister--as
_we_ know her to have been--should have fallen so in love with the one
whose acquaintance she last made. The story can only accept the fact
that it was so, without speculating on its possible connection with the
growth of a something that is not the body. It may appear--or may
not--to many, that, in old Maisie's life, a warp of supreme love,
shuttle-struck by a weft of supreme pain, had clothed her soul, as it
were, in a garment unlike her sister's; a garment some eyes might have
the gift of seeing, to which others might be blind. Old Granny Marrable
had had her share of trouble, no doubt; but Fate had shown her fair
play. Just simple everyday Death!--maternity troubles lived through in
shelter; nursing galore, certainly--who escapes it? Of purse troubles,
debts and sordid plagues, a certain measure no doubt, for who escapes
_them_? But to that life of hers the scorching fires that had worked so
hard to slay her sister's heart, and failed so signally, had never
penetrated. Indeed, the only really acute grief of her placid life had
been the supposed death of this very sister, now so near her, unknown.
Still, Gwen might, of course, have taken just as strongly to Granny
Marrable if some slight chance of their introduction had happened
otherwise.
The old lady remained at Cavendish Square three weeks, living chiefly in
an extra little room, which had been roughly equipped for service, to
cover the contingency. As Miss Lutwyche seemed to fight shy of the task,
Maggie, the Scotch servant, took her in hand, grooming her carefully and
exhibiting her as a sort of sweet old curiosity picked up out of a
dustheap, and now become the possession of a Museum. Aunt Constance, who
kept an eye of culture on Maggie's dialect, reported that she had said
of the old lady, that she was a "douce auld luckie": and that she stood
in need of no "bonny-wawlies and whigmaleeries," which, Miss Grahame
said, meant that she had no need of artificial decoration. She was very
happy by herself, reading any easy book with big enough print. And
though she was probably not so long without the society of grown people
as she had often been at Sapps Court, she certainly missed Dave and
Dolly. But she seemed pleased and gratified on being told that Dave was
not gone, and was at present not going, anywhere near old Mrs. Marrable
in the country.
The young lady broached her little scheme to her venerable friend, or
_protegee_, as soon as it became clear that a return to the desolation
to which Mr. Bartlett had converted Sapps Court might be a serious
detriment to her health. Mr. Bartlett himself admitted the facts, but
disputed the inferences to be drawn from them. Yes--there was, and there
would be, a trifle of myesture hanging round; nothing in itself, but
what you might call traces of ewaporation. You saw similar phenomena in
sinks, and at the back of cesterns. But you never come across anyone the
worse for 'em. He himself benefited by a hatmosphere, as parties called
it nowadays, such as warn't uncommon in basements of unoccupied
premises, and in morasses. But you were unable to account for other
people's constitutions not being identical in all respects with your
own. Providence was inscrutable, and you had to look at the symptoms.
These were the only guides vouchsafed to us. He would, however, wager
that as soon as the paperhanger was out of the house and the plaster
giv' a chance to 'arden, all the advantages of a bone-dry residence
would be enjoyed by an incoming tenant.
Portions of this opinion leaked out during a visit of Aunt M'riar to
Mrs. Prichard, at Cavendish Square, she having come from Ealing by the
'bus to overhaul the position with Uncle Mo, and settle whether she and
Dave and Dolly could return next week with safety. They had decided in
the negative, and Mr. Bartlett had said it was open to them to soote
themselves. Uncle Mo's sleeping-room had, of course, been spared by the
accident, so he only suffered from a clammy and depressing flavour that
wouldn't hang about above a day or two. At least, Mr. Bartlett said so.
Gwen treated the idea that Mrs. Prichard should so much as talk about
returning to her quarters, with absolute derision.
"I'm going to keep you here and see you properly looked after, Mrs.
Picture, till I go to the Towers. And then I shall just take you with
me." For she had installed the name Picture as the old lady's working
designation with such decision that everyone else accepted it, though
one or two used it in inverted commas. "I always have my own way," she
added with a full, rich laugh that Lord William Bentinck might have
heard on his black pedestal in the Square below.
Aunt M'riar departed, not to be too late for her 'bus, and Gwen stayed
for a chat. She often spent half an hour with the old lady, trying
sometimes to get at more of her past history, always feeling that she
was met by reticence, never liking to press roughly for information.
The two thin old palms that had once been a beautiful young girl's
closed on the hand that was even now scarcely in its fullest glory of
life, as its owner's eyes looked down into the old eyes that had never
lost their sweetness. The old voice spoke first. "Why--oh why," it said,
"are you so kind to me? My dear!"
"Is it strange that I should be kind to you?" said Gwen, speaking
somewhat to herself. Then louder, as though she had been betrayed into a
claim to benevolence, and was ashamed:--"The kindness comes to very
little, when all's said and done. Besides, you can ..." She paused a
moment, taking in the pause a seat beside the arm-chair, without loosing
the hand she held; then made her speech complete:--"Besides, you can pay
it all back, you know!"
"I pay! How can I pay it back?"
"You can. I'm quite in earnest. You can pay me back everything I can do
for you--everything and more--by telling me.... Now, you mustn't be put
out, you know, if I tell you what it is." Gwen was rather frightened at
her own temerity.
"My dear--just fancy! Why should I want you not to know--anything I can
tell, if I can remember it to tell you? What is it?"
"How you come to be living in Sapps Court. And why you are so poor.
Because you _are_ poor."
"No, I have a pound a week still. I have been better off--yes! I have
been well off."
"But how came you to live in Sapps Court?"
"How came I?... Let me see!... I came there from Skillicks, at
Sevenoaks, where I was last. Six shillings was too much for me alone. It
is only seven-and-sixpence at Sapps for both of us. It was through poor
Susan Burr that I came there. To think of her in the Hospital!"
"She's going on very nicely to-day. I went to see her with my cousin. Go
on. It was through her?..."
"Through her I came to Sapps. She wanted to be in town for her work, and
found Sapps. She had no furniture, or just a bed. And I had been able to
keep mine. Then, you see, I wanted a helping hand now and again, and she
had her sight, and could make shift to keep order in the place. I had
every comfort, be sure!" This was spoken with roused emphasis, as though
to dissipate uneasiness about herself.
"I saw you had some nice furniture," said Gwen. "I was on the look out
for your desk, where Dave's letters were written."
"Yes, it's mahogany. I was frightened about it, for fear it should be
scratched. But Davy's Aunt Maria was saying Mr. Bartlett's men had been
very civil and careful, and all the furniture was safe in the bedroom at
the back, and the door locked."
"But where did the furniture come from?"
"From the house."
"The house where you lived with your husband?"
The old woman started. "Oh no! Oh no--no! All that was long--long ago."
She shrank from disinterring all but the most recent past.
But it was the deeper stratum of oblivion that had to be reached,
without dynamite if possible. "I see," Gwen said. "Your own house after
his death?"
Memory was restive, evidently--rather resented the inquiry. Still, a
false inference could not be left uncorrected. "Neither my husband's nor
mine," was the answer. "It was my son's house, after my husband's
death." Its tone meant plainly:--"I tell you this, for truth's sake.
But, please, no more questions!"
Gwen's idea honestly was to drop the curtain, and her half-dozen words
were meant for the merest epilogue. When she said:--"And he is dead,
too?" she only wanted to round off the conversation. She was shocked
when the two delicate old hands hers lay between closed upon it almost
convulsively, and could hardly believe she heard rightly the articulate
sob, rather than speech, that came from the old lady's lips.
"Oh, I hope so--I hope so!"
"Dear Mrs. Picture, you _hope_ so?" For Gwen could not reconcile this
with the ideal she had formed of the speaker. At least, she could not be
happy now without an explanation.
Then she saw that it would come, given time and a sympathetic listener.
"Yes, my dear, I hope so. For what is his life to him--my son--if he is
alive? The best I can think of for him, is that he is long dead."
"Was he mad or bad?"
"Both, I hope. Perhaps only mad. Then he would be neither bad nor good.
But he was lost for me, and we were well apart: before he was"--she
hesitated--"sent away...."
"Sent away! Yes--where?"
"I ought not to tell you this ... but will you promise me?..."
"To tell no one? Yes--I promise."
"I know you will keep your promise." The old lady kept on looking into
the beautiful eyes fixed on hers, still caressing the hand she held, and
said, after a few moments' silence:--"He was sent to penal servitude,
not under his own name. They said his name was ... some short name ...
at the trial. That was at Bristol." Then, after another pause, as though
she had read Gwen's thoughts in her scared, speechless face:--"It was
all right. He deserved his sentence."
"Oh, I am so glad!" Gwen was quite relieved. "I was afraid he was
innocent. I thought he could not be guilty, because of you. But was he
really wicked--_bad_, I mean--as well as legally guilty?"
"I like to hope that he was mad. The offence that sent him to Norfolk
Island was scarcely a wicked one. It was only burglary, and it was a
Bank." The old face looked forgiving over this, but set itself in lines
of fixed anger as she added:--"It was not like the thing that parted
us."
"You wish not to tell me that?"
"My dear, it is not a thing for you to hear." The gentleness of the
speaker averted the storm of indignation and contempt which similar
expressions of the correctitudes had more than once excited in this
rebellious young lady.
But Gwen felt at liberty to laugh a little at them, or could not resist
the temptation to do so. "Oh dear!" she cried. "Am I a new-born baby, to
be kept packed in cotton-wool, and not allowed to hear this and hear
that? Do, dear Mrs. Picture--you don't mind my calling you by Dave's
name?--do tell me what it was that parted you and your son. _I_ shall
understand you. I'm not Mary that had a little lamb."
"Well, my dear, when I was about your age, before I was married, I'm not
at all sure that _I_ should have understood. Perhaps that is really the
reason why I took the girl's part...."
"Why you took the girl's part?" said Gwen, who had _not_ understood, so
far, and was puzzled at the expression.
"Yes. I believed her story. They tried to throw the blame on her; he
did, himself. My dear, it was his cowardice and treachery that made me
hate him. You are shocked at that?"
"No--at least, I mean, I don't believe you meant it."
"I meant it at the time, my dear. And I counted him as dead, and tried
to forget him. But it is hard for a mother to forget her son."
"I should have thought so." Gwen was not quite happy about old Mrs.
Picture's inner soul. How about a possible cruel corner in it?
The old lady seemed to suspect this question's existence, unexpressed.
Apology in her voice hinted at need of forgiveness--pleaded against
condemnation. "But," she said, after a faltered word or two, short of
speech, "you do not know, my dear, how bad a man can be. How should
you?"
Perhaps the tone of her voice threw a light on some obscurity accepted
ambiguities had left. For Gwen said, rather suddenly: "You need not tell
me any more. You have told me plenty and I understand it." And so she
did, for working purposes, though perhaps some latitudes in the sea of
this Ralph Daverill's iniquities were by her unexplored and
unexplorable.
This particular atrocity of his has no interest for the story, beyond
the fact that it was the one that led to his separation from his mother,
and that it accounts for the very slight knowledge that she seems to
have had of the details of his conviction and deportation. It must have
happened between his desertion of his lawful wife, Dave's Aunt M'riar,
and his ill-advised attempt at burglary. Whether his offence against
"the girl" whose part his mother took was made the subject of a criminal
indictment is not certain, but if it was he must have escaped with a
slight punishment, to be able to give his attention to the strong room
of that Bank so soon after. Those who are inclined to think that his
mother was unforgiving towards her own son, to the extent of
vindictiveness, may find an excuse for her in a surmise which some facts
connected with the case made plausible, that he adduced some childish
levities on this girl's part as a warrant for his atrocious behaviour
towards her, and so escaped legal penalty. Those who know with what
alacrity male jurymen will accept evasions of this sort, will admit that
this is at least possible.
This is conjecture, by the way, as Gwen asked to know no more of the
incident, seeming to shrink from further knowledge of it in fact. She
allowed it to pass out of the conversation, retaining the pleasant and
wholesome attempt to redistribute the Bank's property as at least fit
for discussion, and even pardonable--an act due to a mistaken economic
theory--redistribution of property by a free lance, not wearing the
uniform of a School of Political Thought.
"But how long was his term of service?" she asked, coming back into the
fresher air of mere housebreaking.
"I am afraid it was for fourteen years. But I have never known. I can
hardly believe it now, but I know it is true for all that, that he was
convicted and transported without the trial coming to my ears at the
time. I only knew that he had disappeared, and thought it was by his own
choice. And what means had I of finding him, if I had wanted to? _That_
I never did."
"Because of ... because of the girl?"
"Because of the girl Emma.... Oh yes! I was his mother, but ..." She
stopped short. Her meaning was clear; some sons would cripple the
strongest mother's love.
"Then you had to give up the house," said Gwen, to help her away from
the memory that stung her, vividly.
"I gave it up and sold the furniture, all but one or two bits I kept by
me--Dave Wardle's desk, and the arm-chair. I went to a lodging at
Sidcup--a pretty place with honeysuckles round my window. I lived there
a many years, and had friends. Then the railway came, and they pulled
the cottage down--Mrs. Hutchinson's. And all the folk I knew were driven
away--went to America, many of them; all the Hutchinsons went. I
remember that time well. But oh dear--the many moves I had after that! I
cannot tell them all one from another...."
"It tires you to talk. Never mind now. Tell me another time."
"No--I'm not tired. I can talk. Where was I? Oh--the lodgings! I moved
many times--the last time to Sapps Court, not so very long ago. I made
friends with Mrs. Burr at Skillicks, as I told you."
"And that is what made you so poor?"
"Yes. I have only a few hundred pounds of my own, an annuity--it comes
to sixty pounds a year. I have learned how to make it quite enough for
me." Nevertheless, thought Gwen to herself, the good living in her
temporary home in Cavendish Square had begun to tell favourably. Enough
is seldom as good as a feast on sixty pounds a year. The old lady
seemed, however, to dismiss the subject, going on with something
antecedent to it:--"You see now, my dear, why I said 'I hope.' What
could the unhappy boy be to me, or I to him? But I shall never know
where he died, nor when."
Gwen tried to get at more about her past; but, at some point antecedent
to this parting from her son, she seemed to become more reserved, or
possibly she had overtasked her strength by so much talk. Gwen noticed
that, in all she had told her, she had not mentioned a single name of a
person. Some slight reference to Australia, which she had hoped would
lead naturally to more disclosure, seemed rather, on second thoughts, to
furnish a landmark or limit, with the inscription: "Thus far and no
farther." You--whoever you are, reading this--may wonder why Gwen, who
had so lately heard of Australia, and Mrs. Marrable's sister who went
there over half-a-century ago, did not forthwith put two and two
together, and speculate towards discovery of the truth. It may be
strange to you to be told that she _was_ reminded of old Mrs. Marrable's
utterance of the word "Australia" when old Mrs. Prichard spoke it, and
simply let the recollection drop idly, _because_ it was so unlikely the
two two's would add up. To be sure, she had quite forgotten, at the
moment, _what_ the old Granny at Chorlton had said about the Antipodes.
It is only in books that people remember all through, quite to the end.
Bear this in mind, that this sisterhood of Maisie and Phoebe was
entrenched in its own improbability, and that one antecedent belief of
another mind at least would have been needed to establish it. A hint, a
suggestion, might have capitalised a dozen claims to having said so all
along. But all was primeval silence. There was not a murmur in Space to
connect the two.
* * * * *
Mr. Bartlett, the builder, after inspecting the collapse of the wall,
lost no time in drawing up a contract to reinstate same and make good
roof, replacing all defective work with new where necessary; only in his
haste to come to his impressive climax--"the work to be done to the
satisfaction of yourself or your Surveyor for the sum of L99.8.4
(ninety-nine pounds eight shillings and fourpence),"--he spelt this last
word _nesseracy_. He called on the landlord, the gentleman of
independent means at Brixton, with this document in his pocket and a
strong conviction of his own honesty in his face, and pointed out that
what he said all along had come to pass. As his position had been that
unless the house was rebuilt--by him--at great expense, it was pretty
sure to come tumbling down, as these here old houses mostly did, it was
difficult for the gentleman of independent means to gainsay him,
especially as the latter's wife became a convert to Mr. Bartlett on the
spot. It was his responsible and practical manner that did it. She
directed her husband--a feeble sample of the manhood of Brixton--not to
set up his judgment against that of professional experience, but to
affix his signature forthwith to the document made and provided. He
said weakly:--"I suppose I must." The lady said:--"Oh dear, no!--he must
do as he liked." He naturally surrendered at discretion, and an almost
holy expression of contentment stole over Mr. Bartlett's countenance,
superseding his complexion, which otherwise was apt to remain on the
memory after its outlines were forgotten.
To return once more to the drying of the premises after their
reconstruction. The accepted view seemed to be that as soon as Mr.
Bartlett and his abettors cleared out and died away, the walls would
begin to dry, and would make up for lost time. Everyone seemed inclined
to palliate this backwardness in the walls, and to feel that they,
themselves, had they been in a like position, could not have done much
drying--with all them workmen in and out all day; just think!
But now a new era had dawned, and what with letting the air through, and
setting alight to a bit of fire now and again, and the season keeping
mild and favourable, with only light frosts in the early morning--only
what could you expect just on to Christmas?--there seemed grounds for
the confidence that these walls would do themselves credit, and yield up
their chemically uncombined water by evaporation. HO2, who existed in
those days, was welcome to stay where he was.
However, these walls refused to come to the scratch on any terms. Homer
is silent as to how long the walls of Ilium took to dry; they must have
been wet if they were built by Neptune. But one may be excused for
doubting if they took as long as wet new plaster does, in premises
parties are waiting to come into, and getting impatient, in London.
Ascribe this laxity of style to the historian's fidelity to his sources
of information.
Not that it would be a fair comparison, in any case. For the walls of
Troy were peculiar, having become a meadow with almost indecent haste
during the boyhood of Ascanius, who was born before Achilles lost his
temper; and before the decease of Anchises, who was old enough to be
unable to walk at the sacking of the city. But no doubt you will say
that that is all Virgil, and Virgil doesn't count.
The point we have to do with is that the walls at No. 7 did _not_ dry.
And you must bear in mind that it was not only Mrs. Prichard's apartment
that was replastered, but that there was a lot done to the ceiling of
Aunt M'riar's room as well, and a bit of the cornice tore away where the
wall gave; so that the surveyor he ordered, when he come to see it, all
the brickwork to come down as far as flush with the window, which had to
be allowed extra for on the contract. Hence the decision--and even that
was coming on to November--that the children should stop with their
granny at Ealing while their aunt come up to get things a little in
order, and the place well aired.
Aunt M'riar's return for this purpose drags the story on two or three
weeks, but may just as well be told now as later.
When she made this second journey up to London, she found Mr. Bartlett's
ministrations practically ended, his only representatives being a man, a
boy, and a composite smell, whereof one of the components was the smell
of the man. Another, at the moment of her arrival, putty, was going
shortly to be a smell of vivid green paint, so soon as ever he had got
these two or three panes made good. For he was then going to put a
finishing coat on all woodwork previously painted, and leave his pots in
the way till he thought fit to send for them, which is a house-painter's
prerogative. He seemed to be able to absorb lead into his system without
consequences.
"There's been a young sarsebox making inquiry arter you, missis," said
this artist, striving with a lump of putty that no incorporation could
ever persuade to become equal to new. He was making it last out, not to
get another half-a-pound just yet a while. "Couldn't say his name, but I
rather fancy he belongs in at the end house."
Aunt M'riar identified the description, and went up to her room
wondering why that young Micky had been asking for her. Uncle Moses was
away, presumably at The Sun. She busied herself in endeavours to
reinstate her sleeping-quarters. Disheartening work!--we all know it,
this circumventing of Chaos. Aunt M'riar worked away at it, scrubbed the
floor and made the bed, taking the dryness of the sheets for granted
because it was only her and not Dolly to-night, and she could give them
a good airing in the kitchen to-morrow. The painter-and-glazier,
without, painted and glazed; maintaining a morose silence except when he
imposed its observance also on a boy who was learning the trade from him
very gradually, and suffering from _ennui_ very acutely. He said to this
boy at intervals:--"You stow that drumming, young Ebenezer, and 'and me
up the turps"--or some other desideratum. Which suspended the drumming
in favour of active service, after which it was furtively resumed.
Uncle Mo evidently meant to be back late. The fact was, his home had no
attraction for him in the absence of his family, and the comfort of The
Sun parlour was seductive. Aunt M'riar's visit was unexpected, as she
had not written in advance. So when the painter-and-glazier began to
prepare to leave his tins and pots and brushes and graining-tools behind
him till he could make it convenient to call round and fetch them, Aunt
M'riar felt threatened by loneliness. And when he finally took his
leave, with an assurance that by to-morrow morning any person so
disposed might rub his Sunday coat up against _his_ day's work, and
never be a penny the worse, Aunt M'riar felt so forsaken that she just
stepped up the Court to hear what she might of its news from Mrs.
Ragstroar, who was momentarily expecting the return of her son and
husband to domestic dulness, after a commercial career out Islington
way. They had only got to stable up their moke, whose home was in a
backyard about a half a mile off, and then they would seek their
Penates, who were no doubt helping to stew something that smelt much
nicer than all that filthy paint and putty.
"That I could not say, ma'am," said Mrs. Ragstroar, in answer to an
inquiry about the object of Micky's visit. "Not if you was to offer five
pounds. That boy is Secrecy Itself! What he do know, and what he do not
know, is 'id in his 'art; and what is more, he don't commoonicate it to
neither me nor his father. Only his great-aunt! But I can send him
round, as easy as not."
Accordingly, about half an hour later, when Aunt M'riar was beginning to
wonder at the non-appearance of Uncle Mo, Master Micky knocked at her
door, and was admitted.
"'Cos I've got a message for you, missis," said he. He accepted the
obvious need of his visit for explanation, without incorporating it in
words. "It come from that party--party with a side-twist in the
mug--party as come this way of a Sunday morning, askin' for old Mother
Prichard--party I see in Hy' Park along of young Dave...."
Aunt M'riar was taken aback. "How ever come you to see more of _him_?"
said she. For really this was, for the moment, a greater puzzle to her
than why, being seen, he should send _her_ a message.
Micky let the message stand over, to account for it. "'Cos I did see
him, and I ain't a liar. I see him next door to my great-aunt, as ever
is. Keep along the 'Ammersmith Road past the Plough and Harrow, and so
soon as ever you strike the Amp'shrog, you bear away to the left, and
anybody'll tell you The Pidgings, as soon as look at you. Small 'ouse,
by the river. Kep' by Miss Horkings, now her father's kicked. Female
party." This was due to a vague habit of the speaker's mind, which
divided the opposite sex into two genders, feminine and neuter; the
latter including all those samples, unfortunate enough--or fortunate
enough, according as one looks at it--to present no attractions to
masculine impulses. Micky would never have described his great-aunt as a
female party. She was, though worthy, neuter beyond a doubt.
Aunt M'riar accepted Miss Hawkins, without further analysis. "_She_
don't know me, anyways," said she. "Nor yet your Hyde Park man, as far
as I see. How come he to know my name? Didn't he never tell you?" She
was incredulous about that message.
"He don't know nobody's name, as I knows on. Wot he said to me was a
message to the person of the house at the end o' the Court. Same like
you, missis!"
"And what was the message?"
"I'll tell you that, missis, straight away and no lies." Micky gathered
himself up, and concentrated on a flawless delivery of the message:--"He
said he was a-coming to see his mother; that's what _he_ said--his
_mother_, the old lady upstairs. Providin' she wasn't nobody else! He
didn't say no names. On'y he said if she didn't come from Skillick's she
_was_ somebody else."
"Mrs. Prichard, she came from Skillick's, I know. Because she said so.
That's over three years ago." Aunt M'riar was of a transparent, truthful
nature. If she had been more politic, she would have kept this back.
"Didn't he say nothing else?" she asked.
"Yes, he did, and this here is what it was:--'Tell the person of the
house,' he says, 'to mention my name,' he says. 'Name o' Darvill,' he
says. So I was a-lyin', missis, you see, by a sort o' chance like, when
I said he said no names. 'Cos he _did_. He said his own. Not but what he
goes by the name of Wix."
"What does he want of old Mrs. Prichard now?"
"A screw. Sov'rings, if he can get 'em. Otherwise bobs, if he can't do
no better."
"Mrs. Prichard has no money."
"He says she has and he giv' it her. And he's going to have it out of
her, he says."
"Did he say that to you?"
"Not he! But he said it to Miss Horkings. Under his nose, like." No
doubt this expression, Michael's own, was a derivative of "under the
rose." It owed something to _sotto voce_, and something to the way the
finger is sometimes laid on the nose to denote acumen.
"Look you here, Micky! You're a good boy, ain't you?"
"Middlin'. Accordin'." An uncertain sound. It conveyed a doubt of the
desirability of goodness.
"You don't bear no ill-will neither to me, nor yet to old Mrs.
Prichard?"
"Bones alive, no!" This also may have been coined at home. "That was the
idear, don't you twig, missis? I never did 'old with windictiveness,
among friends."
"Then you do like I tell you. When are you going next to your aunt at
Hammersmith?"
Micky considered a minute, as if the number of his booked engagements
made thought necessary, and then said decisively: "To-morrow mornin', to
oblige."
"Very well, then! You go and find out this gentleman...."
"He ain't a gentleman. He's a varmint."
"You find him out, and say old Mrs. Prichard she's gone in the country,
and you can't say where. No more you can't, and I ain't going to tell
you. So just you say that!"
"I'm your man, missis. On'y I shan't see him, like as not. He don't stop
in one place. The orficers are after him--the police."
Then Aunt M'riar showed her weak and womanish character. Let her excuse
be the memory of those six rapturous weeks, twenty-five years ago, when
she was a bride, and all her life was rosy till she found herself
deserted--left to deal as she best might with Time and her loneliness.
You see, this man actually _was_ her husband. Micky could not understand
why her voice should change as she said:--"The police are after
him--yes! But you be a good boy, and leave the catching of him to them.
'Tain't any concern of yours. Don't you say nothing to them, and they
won't say nothing to you!"
The boy paused a moment, as though in doubt; then said with
insight:--"I'll send 'em the wrong way." He thought explanation due,
adding:--"I'm fly to the game, missis." Aunt M'riar had wished not to be
transparent, but she was not good at this sort of thing. True, she had
kept her counsel all those years, and no one had seen through her, but
that was mere opacity in silence.
She left Micky's apprehension to fructify, and told him to go back and
get his supper. As he opened the door to go Uncle Mo appeared, coming
along the Court. The sight of him was welcome to Aunt M'riar, who was
feeling very lonesome. And as for the old boy himself, he was quite
exhilarated. "Now we shall have those two young pagins back!" he said.