Tod was nearly fifteen when his mother died, and he was destined to
spend two years under the control of the negative virtues of Uncle
Remus.
Nancy Western left her boy the £1,000 she had inherited, the “business”
and the furniture. The £1,000 was safe enough, invested in those two
mortgages; and Uncle Remus, left sole trustee until Tod was twenty-one,
had a solid faith in mortgages. The “business” and the furniture proved
to be very liquid assets, so liquid that the “business” ran away through
Uncle Remus’s fingers.
The commercial spirit of Pentworth was responsible for this
liquefaction.
Mr. Plumpton happened to have an energetic young nephew who was a
photographer’s assistant at Shaston-on-Sea, and about six months before
Nancy Western’s death Mr. Plumpton sent for that young man and offered
to lend him a hundred pounds.
“Look here, Gus; the woman’s done for. There’s no need to make her an
offer. Set up yourself, and you’ll collar the whole business, without
paying a farthing. When she’s dead, there’ll be a sale.”
“And I can nip in and buy as much of the stuff as I want.”
“Cheap, dirt cheap,” said Mr. Plumpton, remembering a certain scene in
Nancy Western’s house.
That was Pentworth’s idea of commercial morality, but in those days Tod
knew nothing of the Pentworths of England.
The sale of the Westerns’ furniture and shop fittings at No. 13
Spaniards Row left Tod with a few of his father’s books and a little
cane chair that had belonged to his mother. Tod did not go to the sale;
he was resentful and glum about it, yet conscious in a vague way that he
was up against a force that was stronger than his boy’s sentiments.
“You’ve got to have two years more schooling,” said Uncle Remus, “your
mother left it written down. Schooling’s got to be paid for.”
Tod supposed that it had.
Pentworth excelled itself over that sale. It sniffed, and fingered and
sneered, turned the home of the dead Westerns upside down, and snapped
up “bargains.” It was a day of bargains. Mrs. Bunce, who was a
sentimental sort of creature, followed the sale through the first half
of the catalogue and then pushed her way out into the street.
“Downright robbery, that’s what it is,” she said to a neighbour,
“robbin’ that boy. And all the poor soul’s things being treated like
rubbish.”
Mr. Plumpton’s nephew bought the shop fittings and the outfit of the
studio at a very successful figure.
“Smart bit of biz, that!”
Ten years later someone else played the same trick on him, and he asked
if it was “a Christian country.”
No. 13 Spaniards Row ceased to be a little corner of romance. Tod could
never bring himself to go near the house. He tried it but once, and came
by such a lump in his throat and such a misery of loneliness that
Spaniards Row became for him no more than a thing of dreams. He
continued at Chipperton’s as in-boy, living in Mr. Chipperton’s house,
and learning to connect Miss Victoria Chipperton with underdone beef and
pickled cabbage. Tod was never a great desk boy, and he hated church and
the Friday evening hymns almost as much as he hated Miss Chipperton. He
learnt his arithmetic and how to spell; picked up some dud-Latin and a
few oddments of algebra; struck queer, disjointed patches of English
history and remembered a few battles, but little else. He could draw,
and he absorbed some elementary science which the third master threw at
the science class twice a week in a desultory sort of way. But most of
his activities were of the open air. He was the best bat in the school,
and he knew more about birds and trees and wild things than any other
boys at Chipperton’s. As for girls, he had no use for them at all, which
made him rather attractive.
His holidays were spent with Uncle Remus at Burnt Farm, a thoroughly
hideous brick-and-slate house that stood up mournfully on a bare
hillside. Uncle Remus was all for the practical side of life. He
believed in corrugated iron and barbed wire, dirty clothes and clean
land. There were no pigeon-pie, cheese-cake, strawberry-and-cream
touches about Uncle Remus’s farming. He kept a housekeeper and one
strong girl, and the housekeeper saw to it that Tod did not fraternise
with the food in the larder. She was a very tall woman with great bony
hips, a flat chest and a little dab of nose that always looked blue in
winter. Tod used to fancy that she must pull herself out of bed by her
own hair, so tight and thin was it. The “strong girl” was a hoyden who
was always trying to make Tod wrestle, till a new ploughman came along
and married her.
Tod did not love Burnt Farm. It was dreary and penurious and isolated,
and Uncle Remus used to put down seed in winter and shoot the birds.
“Darned little thieves,” he called them.
Uncle Remus shot everything; especially if it could be sold or eaten.
When it was cheaper to trap he trapped, using the steel trap, and this
economy of his led to a row with Tod. For Tod found a rabbit in a steel
trap one morning, down by the ash wood, and after that all Uncle Remus’s
steel traps were missing. Tod had collected them and thrown the lot into
the cow-pond.
He avowed it openly and with anger, and Uncle Remus made an unsuccessful
attempt to whack him.
“You young varmint——”
“Don’t you touch me.”
“What did you do it for—jus’ mischief?”
“How’d you like to be in a trap?”
Uncle Remus stared, and his lower lip hung down.
“We’ll never make a farmer of you, my boy.”
“I’m not going to be a farmer. I’m going to be a doctor, and mend
things.”
Uncle Remus gave one of his rare laughs.
“Start on your manners, young man. You a doctor! Why, Chipperton says
you’re a blockhead.”
“I’m not a blockhead,” said Tod fiercely. “Old Chipperton’s a fool.”
At the end of two years Uncle Remus began to think that it was high time
Tod should earn some money. He was fond of the boy in a queer, grudging,
cold-blooded way, but the little bit of gold exercised a wonderful
fascination over Tod’s uncle. He would spend hours at night, sitting
smoking in his old arm-chair, scribbling figures on the backs of old
envelopes and making eternal calculations. It was Uncle Remus’s great
game, the great game of profit and loss, turnips and haystacks reduced
to the last halfpenny.
“Time a big boy like you was getting to work.”
“I want to be a doctor,” said Tod.
“And where’s the money to come from?”
“There’s the money Mother left me.”
Uncle Remus gave a sardonic grin.
“That won’t be touched so long as I have a say in it. Two good solid
mortgages. Capital ain’t come by every day of the week.”
He was adamant, nor could Tod move him for a moment. Yet the boy was so
obstinate that the old man took the trouble to drive over to Pentworth
and get himself supported by private interviews with Dr. Vance and Mr.
Chipperton.
He came back very well satisfied.
“About this doctoring idea, young man. How long do you think it takes to
learn the trade?”
“I don’t know.”
“Five years. Vance says it would cost the best part of a thousand pounds
to do it well. And at the end of it you might earn a hundred and fifty
pounds and your keep. That’s a monkey’s game. Besides—you ain’t got the
head for it.”
“Who says so?”
“Chipperton. Says you’re a good boy, but you’d never pass the exams.
Money wasted. You listen to me, Tod my boy; business is the thing.
There’s money in a shop—not every sort of shop of course—specially if
you’ve got grit and a little capital. You drop all that black-coat
nonsense. What’s a black coat against ten thousand pounds in good
securities? It’s money that counts.”
Tod had no answer to give to his uncle’s shrewd materialism, no answer
that mattered. Uncle Remus’s opposition was too solid. No money would be
available till Tod was twenty-one, and as the farmer put it: “A young
man can’t loaf for five years.” Moreover, Tod had felt discouraged by
Mr. Chipperton’s scepticism with regard to those exams. Tod still had
some faith in Mr. Chipperton’s intellect, if he had no belief in him as
a cricketer, and Tod was a sensitive boy in spite of all his sturdiness.
A sense of adventure was stirring in him; Chipperton’s school and Burnt
Farm were like sucked eggs.
About that time Uncle Remus brought off one of his diplomatic triumphs;
that is to say, he dispossessed himself of a responsibility without
parting with any time or money. He had a friend at Shaston-on-Sea, a Mr.
Eli Flowerdew who traded in second-hand furniture, books, pictures and
antiques, no hole-and-corner business, mind you, but a two-fronted shop
in Ponsonby Place, a big warehouse, and a reputation. Old Flowerdew and
Uncle Remus had been at school together, and Eli Flowerdew was a “warm
man,” a man with a fine scent for a bargain.
It happened, too, that Uncle Remus was in a position to oblige Mr.
Flowerdew. The reason seemed trivial enough; it would have sounded
meaningless to Tod. His uncle had a fine set of old English pewter,
chargers, plates, ewers, all marked with the mark of a rather famous
pewterer, and Mr. Flowerdew needed that set. He needed it so badly that
he drove over one day in a gig from Shaston and tried to persuade Remus
to sell.
Tod’s uncle “went to market.” He had an idea in his shrewd noddle, and
if he obliged Eli Flowerdew, Mr. Flowerdew should oblige him. He
pretended to be very unwilling to sell that pewter, paraded a quite
unexpected and sentimental pride in it, and boasted of the fact that he
did not want the money.
“It belonged to my grandfather,” he kept repeating; “Ol’ George Barter,
who was the best judge of a bullock this side o’ the Downs.”
Mr. Flowerdew persisted.
“Look here, Remus, this isn’t a matter of one bit of business to me. I
have struck a new client, a wealthy and eccentric sort of fish who’ll
bite at anything old. He’s mad on pewter, and this is the first bait. I
can make hundreds out of him if I get him on the hook, and this pewter
of yours would do it.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it,” said Uncle Remus. He puffed at his pipe, and
refilled Mr. Flowerdew’s glass.
“Money ain’t everything,” he said benignantly. “We’ve been friends these
forty years. Yet I’ve a sort of kind feeling for that pewter.”
The dealer in antiques played sentiment against sentiment.
“That’s true. Anything I can do for you, old man?”
Uncle Remus appeared to search for the thought of something that he
needed.
“No, not as I knows of.”
“Don’t want a bit of furniture?”
“No.”
“Wish I was as contented.”
Uncle Remus smiled like the beautiful and simple old peasant of some
sentimental story. Life was complete; there was nothing on earth that he
greedily desired. And then he removed his pipe from his mouth, pointed
the stem at Mr. Flowerdew, and sat up in his chair.
“Hold on. Why, I never thought o’ that before! You’re a man of
influence, Eli; that’s a fine business of yours, and it’s going to be
finer. You don’t want a lad in your shop, do you?”
“Why, have you got one?”
“Yes. Young Tod Western, my dead niece’s son. He’s leaving Chipperton’s
school in a month or two. He’s a good boy, strong and healthy, and he’ll
have a thousand pounds when he comes of age.”
Eli Flowerdew frowned at his boots.
“I could do with a boy in the shop to help Rook. But he’d have to be
quick and nippy, and have nice manners. We get a lot of women in; you
know, people with style.”
“Tod’s got very good manners,” said Uncle Remus, “and he’d learn what
solid business was with you, Eli.”
“If I like the look of the lad I’ll take him. I’d give him his board to
start with, and then pay him as he shaped.”
Uncle Remus grew quite animated.
“Why, that’s an offer, a generous offer. It just entered my head
sudden-like, and I hadn’t thought about it one way or the other. The
boy’d learn the business, and some day he could start on his own, or you
might go so far as to take him in, with that little capital of his.”
“I might,” said Mr. Flowerdew guardedly, “supposing I see the boy?”
Tod happened to be at Burnt Farm for the half-term holiday. He was found
by Uncle Remus and sent up to put on his Sunday suit and a clean collar.
The farmer was solemn and mysterious about it.
“I’ve opened a new furrow for you, young man. Here’s Mr. Eli Flowerdew,
one of the leading men at Shaston, ready to take you in and teach you
his business. It’s a favour to me.”
“What’s the business?” asked Tod.
“We’ll talk about that later. Mr. Flowerdew wants a young chap with good
manners. Don’t you forget to put on that clean collar.”
So Tod was introduced to Mr. Flowerdew, a tall man who held himself very
straight, and had a sharp, red-brown face and blue eyes that made you
think that he was angry. There were three deep lines on Eli Flowerdew’s
forehead, lines that ran down and met at the root of his nose; the skin
between those lines used to bulge and grow red when anything annoyed
him. Tod noticed that he had a little greyish tuft of hair on his chin;
his lips looked too small to cover his teeth, so that his lips appeared
tight and stretched. When he smiled he showed his fangs like a dog, and
those teeth of his were long and crowded together, and all yellow.
“Here’s young Tod, Eli.”
Mr. Flowerdew held out a hand.
“So this is Tod. How are you, young man?”
“Very well, thank you, sir.”
The “sir” settled it. Tod was of no serious importance to Mr. Flowerdew.
The boy was not an oaf; he had an intelligent face, and looked well
grown and strong. Also he seemed a little shy and impressed. All boys
were much the same to Mr. Flowerdew; he hated the whole genus, and his
attitude towards them was that of a ferocious dog.
“Seems a quiet sort of boy,” he said when Tod had been inspected and
dismissed.
“Takes after his mother. Mr. Chipperton, of Pentworth, thinks a lot of
the lad. He ain’t over quick at his lessons, but they tell me he has
character.”
“I hope he is a religious boy, because if I take him into my family——”
Uncle Remus side-stepped with great adroitness.
“He ain’t a lad as is always after the girls.”
“I’ll take him,” said Mr. Flowerdew, and he also took the pewter at a
price that was very acceptable to Uncle Remus.
About a month later the farmer drove Tod in his market cart over to
Shaston-on-Sea, and left the lad and a little old leather trunk at the
house of Mr. Eli Flowerdew. It was a tall, serious-looking house in
Ponsonby Place, a house that still seemed to be worrying over the fact
that the lower part of its front had been turned into a shop. It stood
abashed under the eyes of the house across the way, a house that
retained the title of a “gentleman’s residence,” a swanking, arrogant
sort of house with a lot of white and green paint, brass-work and bright
curtains. A doctor lived there, on the sunny side of the street. Eli
Flowerdew’s house had its face in the shadow. It looked smutty and
depressed. Its back view was a little more cheerful and prepossessing.
There was a strip of garden that ended in a shrubbery, and from the top
windows you could see the sea.
It was a very grey sea that day. Summer had lost itself for a week, and
a south-west wind played Pan-pipes with the chimney-pots, and drenched
Shaston with occasional scuds of rain. Tod’s stomach felt empty. His
uncle had dropped him at the door of Flowerdew’s shop, and driven off to
dodge the rain-storms.
Tod found a supercilious and cold-eyed young man in the shop. He wore
rimless pince-nez, and had a suave but brutal mouth.
“Hallo, what do you want?”
“I’m Tod Western,” said Tod, lugging that portmanteau of his through the
swing doors.
“Oh, you are, are you! Get that thing round the back. This isn’t a
pawnshop.”
The young man went back to a desk in a far corner, and left Tod to guess
what “round the back” meant. He was more depressed than annoyed by the
young man’s indifference.
“Not that way. Door on the left. And mind the table with the china on
it.”
Tod and his portmanteau bundled themselves into a dismal passage hung
with old prints. He saw a flight of stairs covered with linoleum, and a
landing window at the top, and he was hesitating whether he should climb
the stairs when a voice descended on him.
“Who’s that?” It was a sharp, shrill voice, a voice that was made for
the harrying of servants.
“It’s me,” said Tod inelegantly.
A figure followed the voice, the figure of a girl with a lot of fluffy
hair, and a face that made Tod think of the face of a horse.
“What do you want? That’s the way into the shop.”
“That chap sent me here. I’m Tod Western.”
The girl stared at him. She was extraordinarily like her father, and had
the same hard eyes and ugly mouth.
“Oh, it’s young Western, is it? Your room’s right at the top. Looks out
on the street. You’d better carry that thing up, and don’t you mark the
paint.”
Tod had not the heart to ask Miss Lena Flowerdew for any further
directions. He discovered his room by using the method of trial by
error, butting first into an apartment that was obviously feminine, and
backing out with great briskness. His own room was a dingy little tank
with a stain on the ceiling and a strip of old red stair carpet down the
middle. The chest of drawers and the washstand had once been yellow, but
some enthusiast had streaked them over with a coat of cream paint. The
chest of drawers wobbled on three legs, and was an article of severe
virtue, all its drawers showing a great unreadiness to open to Tod’s
blandishments. There was a text over the bed which cried, “God bless our
Home.”
When Tod had distributed his belongings he sat down on the bed and felt
acutely miserable. This heartache was reinforced by an attack of
sensitive shyness, a panic mood that held him tied to his room. He did
not know whether he ought to go downstairs; he felt that he would be
sure to arrive in the wrong room. Moreover, he did not think he wanted
to meet Miss Lena Flowerdew again, until fate or hunger brought them
together.
Tod sat down for an hour, quite ready to blubber in spite of his
seventeen years, wishing himself back at Burnt Farm, anywhere but where
he was. He had thoughts of making a bolt for it, but that poor old brown
portmanteau appealed against desertion. The thing had belonged to his
father.
And then Tod heard someone coming up the stairs. The footsteps paused
outside the door, and someone knocked.
“Hallo,” said Tod.
Tod had never been called Mr. Western before, and the title sent a
thrill through him. Moreover, the voice was quite a different sort of
voice from that of Miss Lena Flowerdew. It was gentle and soft, and
rather deprecating.
Tod got up and opened the door, and found a girl standing there, a shy
girl with dark eyes, brown hair, and a quick colour. She looked fragile
and pretty, and not much older than Tod.
“Good afternoon,” he said.
“Tea’s ready. We have it at five.”
“Been unpacking my things,” he explained, blushing.
Her brown eyes smiled at him, the first gleam of human sympathy he had
caught in that house.
“I’m Kitty.”
“My name’s Tod, short for Todhunter, Miss Flowerdew.”
“It’s quite a nice name,” she answered, “I’ll show you the way down.”
She did more than that, for she saved him from being overwhelmed by the
solemnity of the Flowerdew tea-table. Mr. Flowerdew was drinking tea as
though he had to catch a train. He showed his teeth at Tod in what was
meant for a smile.
“Sit down, Western. My two girls, Lena and Kitty. Mr. Rook—my
assistant. Pass the butter, Rook will you.”
Tod sat down next to Kitty, and was given tea by Miss Flowerdew. She
also pushed a tin of sardines towards him with perfunctory
suggestiveness, and Tod felt that she was watching how many he took.
Edwin Rook eyed him all the while with cynical curiosity. Mr. Flowerdew
took no more notice of him at all. It was Kitty who saved him from utter
demoralisation and from choking himself over his tea.
She cut bread for him.
“Have some jam, Mr. Western.”
Tod had jam, lots of jam. He began to think that he liked Kitty
Flowerdew very much indeed.