A week after William Western’s death, an old lady took up her abode in
the kitchen, and Tod’s mother went out of it and accepted the
responsibilities of the studio and the shop. She had grown familiar with
the technique of the business during her husband’s lifetime, and a neat
little notice posted up in the window warned Pentworth that it could be
photographed as before. Nancy Western had inherited two five hundred
pound mortgages which gave her forty pounds a year. She meant to make a
fight of it in Pentworth for the sake of her boy, and not to be pushed
off the narrow shelf of her commercial opportunity.
Tod would not be parted from his mother those days. He slept in her bed,
and more than once he woke at night to find her clasping him and kissing
him with passionate tenderness.
“Oh, little Will.”
Tod’s arms clung round her neck.
“I’m a man now, Mummy,” and so he was, in spite of his years.
He had developed a sudden new self-consciousness and a new ideal. He
stayed with her in the shop, sat with her in the dark-room, watching and
learning with an intense seriousness that helped the broken woman beside
him back to her smiles. Mrs. Western was looking very pale and comely
and pathetic in her black dress, and other people noticed this, as well
as Tod. Quite a considerable part of Pentworth expressed its sympathy by
coming to be photographed. Mr. Jacks headed the procession, and the
Mayor and Mayoress gave the impulse public recognition.
Nancy Western had as much as she could do. Tod, the child, was
challenged and worried. He ran about after her like a dog, but a very
intelligent, quick-eyed dog, who soon learnt to fetch and carry. His
devotedness overtopped all difficulties. He learnt where every thing was
to be found; he brushed out the shop and dusted the shelves and counter,
tied up parcels, went on errands, even insisted on being allowed to make
solemn, round-handed entries in the ledger and day-book. He began to
pick up the technique of the dark-room where his mother worked with the
light from the little red lamp shining on her soft hair and pale face.
And he developed a quaint and autocratic fatherliness towards her that
issued orders and saw them obeyed.
“Mummy must come to dinner.”
And Mummy went.
“Mummy’s eyes are tired. Mummy must come and lie down on the sofa.”
How much his queer and authoritative little tendernesses helped his
mother, Tod never guessed. His child’s love stanched the blood-flow of
those bitter weeks, and turned her anguish into a duller pain. He made a
complete and splendid conquest of old Mrs. Bunce who functioned in the
kitchen. She would have let him turn her rolling-pin into a cricket bat,
or play football with her Sunday cap.
“That there child’s a marvel,” she announced to her friends; “there must
’ave been a lot of good, somehow, in William Western.”
A year passed away, and Nancy Western was able to look about her and
estimate her success. She found that it had been very considerable, so
considerable that she was able to pay a young woman to help her in the
business, and to send Tod to school. Uncle Remus, who still drove in
regularly from Lydhurst, and whose contribution to Nancy’s assistance
had been a great deal of pessimistic advice, a few potatoes, and a
bundle or two of acid rhubarb, suggested the Grammar School at
Marychurch.
“A solid sort o’ school,” he called it; “nothing new-fangled about it.
Turn a boy out sensible and solid.”
“And stupid,” added Tod’s mother.
She pointed out to Uncle Remus that the Grammar School at Marychurch
meant Tod’s board, and that she could not afford it, and Uncle Remus did
not offer to accept any responsibility.
Moreover, Tod absolutely and utterly refused to be parted from his
mother, and her heart was with him in his obstinacy. He was such a
sturdy, spirited child, she could find no signs of the incipient milksop
in him. A Mr. Chipperton conducted a private school in Pentworth, and
Nancy Western called on Mr. Chipperton.
He was a tall man of forty or so, with a high bumpy forehead, pince-nez,
and an air of vivacious benignity. Mr. Chipperton “conducted” his
school; any other method of expressing his mastership would have been
vulgar, and Mr. Chipperton was never vulgar. He was a good soul who had
concentrated in his person all the ideals and prejudices of middle-class
Pentworth, and to whom everything in life was either “nice or nasty,”
“proper or improper.” He studied refinement, and kept a rather bleary
and mistrustful eye on all girls. Sex scared him to death, made him
chatter all sorts of fanatical and pathetic nonsense. Mr. Chipperton was
English middle-class prudishness stuck on a stool and wagging a long
forefinger. He was a bachelor; Miss Victoria Chipperton, his sister,
kept his house and helped him to guard the world’s virtue.
“My dear madam, the note of my school is refinement—refinement, and a
religious education. I try to remember, madam, that character comes
before the multiplication table. I try to be a father to my boys.”
Nancy Western, judging him by her dead husband, thought Mr. Chipperton
an honest but harmless sort of fool. She felt quite capable of looking
after Tod’s character; she wanted Mr. Chipperton to educate him, and she
said so.
“Certainly, madam, our curriculum is up-to-date in every department. We
can give a scientific and commercial training. I am not a bigoted
classic.”
“I want him to learn what is sensible and useful.”
“And poetry, madam, music, and lit-er-a-ture?”
“I’ll see to the romance,” said Nancy Western.
So Clarence Todhunter Western trudged daily to Prospect House and sat
under Mr. Chipperton and Mr. Chipperton’s two assistant masters. Tod
began by being rather shy and solemn, and he seemed to know very little
about arithmetic and grammar, and his knowledge of Latin was nil. He was
placed in the lowest class, and though he was no Paladin in the
class-room, he was a force to be reckoned with in the playground.
“Western, how do you spell pork?”
“Pig’s meat, sir?”
Mr. Chipperton inclined his head in the affirmative.
“P-a-l-k, sir,” said Tod.
The master blinked.
“Very ingenious, Western, but incorrect. Think of fork and not chalk.”
Tod heard about pork in the playground. Little Cocky Walker, that
snub-nosed, pallid, supercilious bit of infallibility, selected Tod for
the day’s jest.
“Come here, Clarence Todhunter, and spell chalk.”
“C-h-a-l-k,” said Tod.
“Rot. It’s c-h-o-r-k, you cuckoo.”
“I’m not a cuckoo,” said Tod.
“If I say you’re a cuckoo you’re a cuckoo.”
“Then you’ll say it the other way round.”
And Tod closed with Master Walker, and after rollings and contortions
that lasted three minutes, remained triumphantly uppermost, holding the
infallible one’s face hard against the gravel.
“Say ‘Western’s not a cuckoo.’”
Further contact with the gravel persuaded Master Walker that it would be
wiser to propitiate Tod.
Tod let him up.
“Cocky’s licked at last,” said one of the interested crowd, and Tod’s
imaginative spelling ceased to be a subject for public criticism.
Prospect House was a very ordinary school with the usual class-rooms and
the lifeless uninspired routine. The natural curiosity of the child did
not survive in that pot-shop where all the pots were alike and filled
with the same stodge. One or two boys remained keen, and followed Mr.
Chipperton into the wilds of algebra, and found adventurous delights in
Latin grammar. Nine-tenths of the school were bored, and determined to
avoid learning anything that could be safely left unlearnt. So long as
you could steer safely past “impots” and a whacking, what did it matter?
Tod, too, was bored, and it was his first experience of boredom. He did
not understand it, and he was inclined to blame himself. The great fact
that weighed with him was that his mother had sent him to this school to
learn, and she was paying money for it, and he decided that it was his
business to learn. He fought his boredom as though it were a deadly sin,
and Mr. Jukes the junior master began to appreciate Tod.
Mr. Chipperton was an innocent and unconscious dispeller of ennui. He
was the serious, impressive, dramatic clown, and the little devils
mocked him. Mr. Chipperton was something of a poser, but he did not pose
effectively.
“You must lead boys; you must be a boy with boys,” such were his
inspirations.
He played cricket with the school, going out in baggy grey flannel
trousers, a white shirt, and an absurd little red and black striped cap
that refused to sit down decently on his bald head. He was very
energetic and conversational in the field, but he let most of the balls
through and muffed nearly all his catches. The school hung on the edge
of giggles when he was batting. He sweated, and poked and flourished,
and was generally bowled in the second over by some quite futile googly.
Then there were those “Christian evenings” on Fridays in the big
schoolroom. Tod attended on several occasions until he disgraced himself
by laughing, and was severely admonished by Miss Chipperton.
The process never seemed to vary. Mr. Chipperton would seat himself on
the music-stool, lift the lid of the keyboard, and let his fingers
patter over the keys. There were mice in the piano—perennial mice.
Mr. Chipperton’s handkerchief would come out.
“Dear me, nasty little animals!”
He would wipe the notes excitedly.
“Haven’t we got a cat, my dear? Disgusting little animals. Now, boys,
‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’——”
Tod grew in stature and in understanding that summer, and came by a new
and rather disturbing knowledge of the great facts of life. In spite of
Mr. Chipperton Tod discovered sex, and it was uncovered to him
nastily—by a member of a clique of dirty little boys who had wriggled
behind the mock curtain with which the English middle-class drapes the
mystery.
Tod was horrified, disgusted, incredulous, because these urchins dragged
his parents into the squabble, and attacked him through his mother.
“You go and ask your ma how you were born.”
“I will,” said Tod.
And he did.
It was one of the moments of anguish in Nancy Western’s life, for the
boy came to her shrinkingly, his eyes asking to be given a convincing
picture of the old fairy tale. He had been shocked, and his mother had
to shock him a second time; nor need it have happened, and Tod’s mother
blamed herself. Had she been thoughtless or a coward?
“God did give me to you, didn’t he, Mummy?”
“Yes, dear.”
“How did I come, then?”
It was dusk, and she drew Tod to the sofa and, feeling her face like
fire, told him the truth. She had to tell him; she knew now that she
ought to have told him before. The nastiness should never have been. It
was England, the old England of the “little Bethels.”
The child shrank from her a little, and she felt his shrinking in every
fibre of her woman’s soul. It could not end there, and she stripped her
love and her courage to the child, and fought to regain the glamour of
the lost fairy tale. She told him the whole story, simply, a little
tragically, describing the long waiting, the pain, the joy. Truth and
emotion will always touch and convince a child.
In the end the boy’s arms were round her neck.
“Oh, Mummy, Mummy, what a lot of pain I gave you.”
She had won.
One of the backyard clique challenged Tod in the playground next
morning. He was an unwholesome, spotty boy of the name of Blimmer.
“Hallo, Western, did you ask your mother?”
Tod went very white.
“Don’t you speak of my mother; she’s an angel.”
“Shucks,” said the other.
And then Tod flew at him and with such a fury that its fierceness
impressed itself on all the boys who saw that fight.
Blimmer was bigger than Tod, but he was flabby, and the smaller boy’s
fury scared him. Even when he flinched and tried to edge away, Tod
followed him with relentless, hammering fists. It ended with Blimmer
lying face downwards on the ground, snivelling, to be rescued by Mr.
Chipperton who stalked with jerky solemnity across the playground, and
pulled Tod off by the collar.
“For shame, Western.”
Tod blazed at the master.
“Then he shouldn’t speak of my mother. I’ll kill him another time.”
From that day all the decent boys loved Tod dearly.
Coincidences gathered to thrust a more intimate conception of the great
mystery upon the boy. He overheard things, casual bits of gossip, words
that passed perhaps between Mrs. Bunce and her friends.
“Pretty Mrs. Western.”
They called his mother that. Yes, of course she was pretty.
“She ought to marry again.”
“There’s gents who’re ready to ask her.”
And then the figures of Mr. Plumpton and Mr. Parfit loomed up over Tod,
and threw their heavy, black-coated shadows across his life.
Mr. Parfit was a decent little man with a brisk and nervous manner. He
was very black and sallow, had very small hands and feet, a hollow chest
and high shoulders. His obvious niceness did not recommend him to
anybody who was easily bored. He was very polite to Tod, and even
brought lumps of sugar for Tod’s latest friend, Gruff, a mongrel
terrier. Mr. Parfit appeared to be intensely interested in artistic
photography, but Tod soon realised Mr. Parfit wanted his mother.
Mr. Plumpton was a very different sort of creature. He kept the grocery
shop in Stone Street, and was big and clumsy and domineering. He had a
fine, egg-coloured moustache that spread and drooped like the wings of a
swallow tail butterfly. When he looked at you his swollen blue eyes
seemed to be saying, “We make no allowance for broken eggs.” Tod had
heard his scolding in the shop, and seen him turn with sudden shining
and sweating urbanity to serve someone who was worth while.
“Gooday, madam, be-ootiful weather; and what can we do for you to-day,
madam?”
Mr. Plumpton was a widower and he had a family of his own, half a dozen
cheese-faced children with loud voices and hard eyes. The grocer may
have wanted someone to manage his house—anyway he began to bulk big
round about No. 13 Spaniards Row, and to make love to Tod’s mother. The
bigger he bulked, the more Tod hated him, and the less he saw of Mr.
Parfit. Mr. Parfit was crowded out and became a negligible shadow.
Tod had never hated anything as he hated Mr. Percy Plumpton.
“Hallo, Clarence; learnt to spell yet?”
He tried to be jocular and friendly in an arrogant sort of way. The boy
had to be humoured, but Tod remained glumy and _farouche_.
“We’ll cure you of that—some day,” said Mr. Plumpton to himself.
The man was a mountain of self complacency, a strongly sexed beast who
had had his way with women. There was something greasy and unclean about
him, as though he was always hot and never washed. But Tod hated him
most for the way he looked at his mother; she might have been something
he wanted to eat.
Tod noticed that his mother remained quite calm and quiet when Mr.
Plumpton was talking to her. She did not seem to be in the least afraid
of him; she treated him just like other people.
Tod was worried, bewildered, frightened. He had moments of anguish,
moments when he yearned to rush at his mother and cry, “O, Mummy, Mummy,
don’t.”
His mother puzzled him. Mr. Plumpton might have been an old woman in a
black bonnet for all the change he wrought in her. She had the same soft
laugh; the same steady, tender eyes; the same pale quick-coloured
prettiness. Tod realised of a sudden how pretty his mother was, far
prettier than Mrs. Coghurst of the Brewery, and Mrs. Coghurst was
supposed to be Pentworth’s Astarte. Tod grew almost afraid of his
mother’s prettiness. He saw Mr. Plumpton’s big red hands making a grab
at her, and the vision filled him with sensitive horror.
Tod grew reserved and shy those days. He kept apart, thought a great
deal about his father, and was often in that corner of the churchyard
where William Western lay buried. His hatred of Mr. Plumpton was a great
cloud over his life, a cloud that threatened to burst.
And burst it did, and the dog Gruff was the cause of the deluge.
It appeared that Mr. Plumpton had invited himself to tea. He came
swelling in, making the floor boards creak, and with his usual
complacent clumsiness, trod on Gruff’s tail. Now Gruff was a
quick-tempered dog, and his teeth tried the texture of Mr. Plumpton’s
grey Sunday trousers.
“Damn the dog!”
Next moment a fat leg swung out and a big boot sent Gruff head over
heels into the corner.
Tod lost his whole soul at that. He went at the big man like a little
white-faced fury, kicking and hitting, and his kicks hurt.
“Tod, dear!”
“You brat! I’ll teach you manners.”
Mr. Plumpton got Tod by the ear and twisted it with his big fingers,
while with the other hand he cuffed Tod’s head.
“If your mother can’t manage you, it’s time——”
Then Nancy Western intervened.
“How dare you touch my boy! How dare you!”
Mr. Plumpton stared at her, but he let go of Tod, who would have rushed
in again had not his mother seized him. She was breathing fast, and he
could feel her heart thudding, and her eyes were all ablaze.
“You cad! Get out of my house!”
“Well, I’m damned,” said the man, “and I was going to ask you to marry
me.”
“You! Marry me!” she laughed. “I knew the honour was to be offered me,
and I had to wait to refuse it, hadn’t I? Get out of my house, please.”
And Mr. Plumpton went.
Tod leapt up into his mother’s arms and kissed her.
“You do love me, Mummy?”
“My darling.”
“You won’t give me another daddy?”
She kissed him with passion.
“Never, never, my little Will.”