Caroline Crescent and “Clovelly” had taken possession of Tod Western.
Through all those rapidly moving months he was being peacefully
persuaded towards middle-class culture. The women had conceived an
interest in Tod, Miss Truebody of St. Helen’s Terrace who lent him her
Tennyson and persuaded him to go occasionally to St. Alban’s Church,
Mrs. Rathbone Cragg, Bertha Cragg, even the girl who typed in the
office. Tod had become attractive to women. He piqued the sex in them,
and with an innocence that was all the more provoking in that he was not
acutely conscious just then of the sex in himself.
Tod was finding life very interesting. He was so busy doing things that
he did not drift into any of those sauntering moods that are apt to end
in the sentimental discovery of petticoats and ribbons. He had grown to
love his work, and so keen was he that he procured books on architecture
and building construction and sat up at night reading. His day began
with a swim or a brisk walk. He played football that winter for the West
Shaston Sports Club and in the summer he spent the evenings at tennis.
There were no gaps in his day, no dawdling interludes. Sex was dormant
in him, waiting like a cunning woman for the moment when the young male
should tire of merely hitting a ball and developing his strength.
Sex too had relieved Tod of Mr. Frederick Rathbone Cragg’s mentorship.
The impressive Fred was cultivating the elder Miss Horrox, and he had no
time now for the tutelage of Tod. His sister had slipped unobtrusively
into his place. Tod went very often to “Clovelly,” and came to look on
Fred’s sister as a jolly girl without any nonsense. The sex in her never
touched him, and Bertha, with that unusual instinct of hers, hid her sex
and played the man. She was in love with Tod, and she waited.
Yet her secret tenderness, the love of a clever yet rather plain girl
for a healthy, game-playing boy, watched over Tod jealously and followed
him into all the corners of his life. She knew more about Tod perhaps
than Tod knew about himself. She knew how he spent his day, and how he
passed his evenings; Miss Truebody told her, for Miss Truebody owed much
to the Craggs. And she was at one with Mr. Julian Burgetrode in her
sensing of the unusual in Tod. She knew that he was quite unlike any
young male thing she had ever met; there was a directness about him, a
kind of delightful simplicity, the look of going a far journey in his
blue eyes, a promise of something clean and adventurous in his squarish
head and brown face. For Tod was clean, and it was his cleanness that
appealed to Bertha Cragg, who was a sensitive, a spiritual “sport” in
that very material and middle-class world.
Tod found it very easy to talk to her. She was a comrade, just like a
man friend, and he had not discovered the woman behind the frank and
game-loving girl. She had very pleasant brown eyes, white teeth, and
rather a shapely figure, and she could play a fast game at tennis and
swim almost as well as Tod. They made a pleasant, laughing,
unselfconscious pair, and Mrs. Rathbone Cragg folded her hands over it,
and did not interfere. Tod had a future and some capital. Mr. Julian
Burgetrode loomed big in the North.
Tod’s quaint franknesses were not unlike the sayings of his father, and
Bertha caught them in her lap and then hid them away in her heart.
“What do people want to make money for? It’s much jollier doing things
for love.”
“I should like to be able to swim across the Channel.”
“I can’t stand cheats.”
“Wasting your time with a lot of girls!”
She laughed over that saying, with a little twinge of self-pity—yet she
knew that he had spoken the truth. He did not spend his evenings loafing
round the bandstand, playing with a lot of fluffy young flappers or
young women with red necks and chests and sun-scorched faces. There were
no huddlings into dark corners, giggles and a curiosity that might end
in a little mock protesting scream. And she was glad.
Tod saw very little of old Shaston, the Shaston of the Flowerdews and
the Snapes. Kitty Flowerdew was married to Edwin Rook, and was expecting
a baby, but Tod knew nothing of that. Mossup was married too and settled
in that little white cottage of his, and Tod went and had tea with them
one Sunday afternoon. Mossup took him all over the house and garden, and
simpered with pride.
“Nice little kitchen, isn’t it? Olive’s a wonder. Did you ever see such
pots and pans? Come and see the chickens. Yes, nothing but egg-boxes,
old chap; the house took six at ninepence each, not so bad. Eggs? Oh,
yes, we’ll get plenty of eggs.”
After tea he led Tod into the garden and became mysteriously
confidential.
“I’m setting up on my own this autumn. Little shop in Duke Street; just
two windows and a door in between. Olive’s going to do the hats. She’s a
wonder at hats. So if you can send anyone along, old chap——”
Tod promised to tell all West Shaston and St. Margarets of Mossup’s
shop. Mossup was such a good chap, even though he did not play games.
One evening Tod met Bob Twine. He was strolling back from the St.
Margarets Tennis Club, a brown young man in very white flannels,
meditating deeply on the improving of his forehand drive.
“Hallo, Tod.”
“Hallo, Bob, old man. Haven’t seen you for years.”
Bob Twine looked shabbily smart, and that black chin of his seemed
blacker than ever.
“Say, you are some knut, kid! How’s life?”
“Quite good,” said Tod.
Bob looked him over with the eyes of a connoisseur. There was no doubt
about it, Tod was “it.” His flannel trousers were nicely creased, his
buckskin shoes white as milk, his Oxford shirt, soft collar and tie the
best productions of Messrs. Mummery, the gentleman’s outfitters in
Pomeroy Place. Tod’s hat was at the correct angle. He had collected and
absorbed all the subtle details pertaining to costume, and he carried
them with that utter lack of self-consciousness that puzzles and piques
the more florid bounder.
“They are making a pukka gent of you, old man. Quite the Burlington,
what!”
“Shut up,” said Tod.
“It’s a fact. Real West Shaston china, the genuine article. Got a dress
suit, I suppose?”
“Not yet.”
“It will come, old man. Play bridge and go to dances, and eat
strawberries and cream in people’s gardens.”
“Shut up. Come and have some supper one night.”
Twine refused, and refused with a kind of awkward sulkiness.
“Rather full up just now, kid. I’ve got a girl, and she takes some
satisfying. Well, don’t forget us all.”
“I shan’t,” said Tod, “but why not bring your—your fiancée along with
you.”
“That’s some word, old man. But she isn’t that—yet; that’s the trouble.
Well, so long.”
They parted, Tod wondering why he thought Bob Twine rather a coarse
beast, and whether he—Tod—had changed as Twine said he had. Twine
loafed away, smiling a queer, sensual, slightly cynical smile.
“They’ve got him,” he thought, “he’s going up into the real respectable
pew. Would I swop? Damn it, no! You can’t be respectable and have such a
time with the girls.”
Ten minutes later he met a fair-haired, and richly coloured young woman
on the parade. She had been waiting in one of the shelters, eating
sweets and reading a paper novel. And the face of the young woman was
the face of “Giggles,” Miss Millie Hornblower, to whom Tod had once
given a German-silver ring.
The greater part of a year had passed since Mr. Julian Burgetrode had
last played the Colossus in his toy-town, but he reappeared one day at
the Hotel Majestic, and two evenings later Miss Truebody found him on
her doorstep. The bell of No. 11 St. Helen’s Terrace had been rung with
unnecessary vigour, and Miss Truebody’s instinct was to protest. The
maid was out, and she answered the door herself.
“Yes? What do you want, please?”
She had meant to remark that the inmates of No. 11 were not deaf, but
people did not use sarcasm on Mr. Burgetrode. The fierce blue eyes, and
the red tie, and the masterful brown face were so very vivid and
arrestive. Mr. Burgetrode was always treated like a big and rather
doubtful tempered dog, and Miss Truebody forgot about the bell.
“Is Tod Western in?”
“Mr. Western? No I think he is at the tennis club.”
“Will he be long?”
Mr. Burgetrode’s fierce manner quite agitated Miss Truebody.
“Oh, no, he may be in any minute; you see, he always comes home and has
a little supper and studies before going to bed.”
“Ha!” said Mr. Burgetrode, and Miss Truebody winced.
“He studies quite hard, you know, such a nice, gentlemanly, quiet
fellow.”
“I’ll come in and wait.”
“Oh, certainly. Are you——”
“My name is Burgetrode. Will you show me his room, please?”
Miss Truebody continued her “agitato” on her way up the stairs.
“Quite a healthy, sunny room, I’m sure. I have got him a nice arm-chair;
the windows look south, you know, and he has his meals in my
sitting-room. Yes, it has been very hot to-day, hasn’t it?”
“Very,” said Mr. Burgetrode tersely, wondering if the lady was married
and had a daughter. He did not believe in a man marrying before thirty,
and he did not want Tod to marry any girl in Shaston. Mr. Burgetrode had
unusual views on sex and marriage.
Sheer nervousness kept Miss Truebody holding the door handle of Tod’s
room and making polite conversation.
“I expect he’ll be playing tennis with Miss Cragg, Mr. Burgetrode. Such
a very nice girl, and Mrs. Cragg is one of the kindest and most
Christian of women. Yes, he does smoke, just a little, poor dear boy,
but such mild tobacco, I’m sure.”
Mr. Burgetrode had picked up a brier pipe, and he took not the slightest
notice of Miss Truebody. Believing in allowing such clockwork ladies to
run themselves down, he idled round Tod’s room, looking at the books and
the furniture with the interest of a man who had vivid memories of his
own youth. Tod’s blue bathing suit was hanging over the back of a chair,
and Miss Truebody, with great decency and presence of mind, threw a
towel over it, and then “chasséd” towards the door.
“You’ll find that chair quite comfortable, Mr. Burgetrode.”
“I have no doubt of it, madam,” he said, removing the towel from the
blue bathing suit, and staring at it fixedly till Miss Truebody had
closed the door.
He was very interested in Tod’s room. The Truebody part of it was quaint
and old maidish and precise, but Tod’s share was that of the healthy
young male. There were glass lustre candlesticks, and a little white
marble cross on the mantelpiece. The furniture was mahogany of the most
obviously Victorian pattern. It appeared that Miss Truebody had dabbled
much with the paint brush at some period of her life, and the splasher
above the washstand showed a bunch of white Madonna lilies. A couple of
tambourines that hung one on each side of the overmantel had been
decorated with very wooden and wall-eyed tom-tits balancing with a grim
determination on bits of twig. But the room was snug and clean and full
of Tod and his possessions, tobacco tins, books, a pair of trousers
thrown on the bed, a collar and tie and a pair of mauve socks on the
chest of drawers, a little table in the window with ink, writing paper
and notebooks. Julian Burgetrode picked up some of Tod’s books, and
found that he was reading architecture, and practical building, and an
elementary handbook on sanitation. Mr. Burgetrode smiled. The Craggs had
sent him very flattering reports on Tod.
His protégé arrived and found Mr. Burgetrode sitting side-saddle on the
window-sill, and enjoying that evening glimpse of old Shaston and the
sea.
“Well, Master Ajax?”
Tod was pleased to see Mr. Burgetrode, and Mr. Burgetrode was pleased
with the pleasure on the boy’s brown face.
“I’m sorry you had to wait, sir; I would have stayed in if I had known.”
“Not a bit of it. You’ve grown.”
“Have I?” laughed Tod.
“Let’s see, how old are you?”
“Nearly twenty, sir.”
“Wish I could be twenty again. You are coming out to dinner with me,
Tod, yes, just as you are. This seems a clean and comfortable sort of
place.”
“Miss Truebody is very kind, a good sort,” said Tod.
“And religious?”
“Very religious, sir. People are very kind—and I am having a good time,
and I like the work.”
“Houses?”
“I never get tired of houses, sir, all sorts of houses. I’m reading
quite a lot.”
“Excellent!” said Mr. Burgetrode, with a queer gleam of the eyes. “Now
come along to dinner.”
Tod dined at the “Majestic,” and Mr. Burgetrode saw that the lad had
changed. He had developed poise, and he was no longer embarrassed by
waiters and people in evening dress. He had put on new social clothes.
But the real Tod was there as of old, frank, fearless quaintly direct
and eager, a happier Tod perhaps, a boy who had the makings of a very
big man.
He talked away to Mr. Burgetrode, and if the “Colossus” asked a few
questions they were very significant and pertinent questions, and Tod
responded to them with ingenuous readiness.
His talk was all of houses, not only of houses as they were, but houses
as they might be and ought to be. He was interested in the conceiving
and building of houses and cottages, and in the atmosphere of their
surroundings. Tod had seen some of the “county” houses during the year,
and the beauty and the soft serenity of many of them had left a vivid
picture in his brain. He had not forgotten that house-hunting adventure
with Arthur Mossup, and those stuffy and dreary little grey boxes at the
back of Shaston town, and Tod, with the natural idealism of youth,
believed that such mean beastliness in brick should never have been
perpetrated.
“There ought to be gardens and trees,” he said, “and plenty of places to
play in. Why should people live in rabbit-hutches?”
“The speculator’s idea of economics, my boy.”
“Well, it oughtn’t to be,” said Tod; “and all those dirty little houses,
each with a dirty little kitchen, and making more dirt and mess. And no
baths.”
“You would like to make a new town all out of your own head, with
gardens and baths, and playing grounds, and concert halls and fine
cookhouses?”
“I should,” said Tod, his eyes alight, “but who’d pay for it?”
“Exactly!” said Mr. Burgetrode; “we don’t like paying for other people’s
health and comfort.”
It was rather obvious to Mr. Burgetrode that the Craggs had not pushed
Tod against the financial thorns of the business. He had not got himself
pricked and exasperated as he had done in the shops of Messrs. Flowerdew
and Snape. The Craggs were respectable people. They did not perpetuate
the more flagrant cynicisms, and West Shaston was too comfortable and
well fed and wealthy to bother about elemental economics. The Craggs had
made money rather easily; they had not developed the clawing hands, the
fierce masticating muscles and the canine teeth of the average
Flowerdew. Tod had not yet discovered “commercial competition,” that
devil god of the industrial age, the god of the unprincipled and the
greedy.
Mr. Burgetrode even persuaded Tod to betray his views on girls, and
discovered, more by inference, that Tod was not interested in them for
the moment. Mr. Burgetrode had introduced the Craggs into the
conversation, and he heard all about Fred Cragg the impressive, Mrs.
Cragg whose lap was full of charity, and Bertha Cragg who could swim
like a man and place a back-hand volley down the side line with fine
precision.
“She’s a good sort,” said Tod; “no nonsense, just like a man, you know.
Can’t stand the giggling sort, all ribbons and hat brim. The Craggs have
been very kind to me, sir, very kind indeed.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Mr. Burgetrode, beginning to wonder whether
Miss Cragg was not a rather dangerous young woman. He did not want Tod
to marry for many years to come, and he did not want him to marry a girl
of the middle classes.