sometimes there was quite a kindly and redeeming sunshine in London.
In the spring, in early summer or in October. It did not blaze, but
it filled the air with a mild warmth, and turned the surfaces it lit
not indeed to gold but to amber and topaz. And there were even hot
days in London with skies of deep blue above, but they were rare.
And sometimes there was daylight without the sun....
"Yes," said Sarnac and paused. "At times there was a daylight that
stripped London bare, showed its grime, showed its real
ineffectiveness, showed the pitiful poverty of intention in its
buildings, showed the many coloured billstickers' hoardings for the
crude and leprous things they were, brought out the shabbiness of
unhealthy bodies and misfitting garments....
"Those were terrible, veracious, unhappy days. When London no longer
fascinated but wearied and offended, when even to an uninstructed boy
there came some intimation of the long distressful journey that our
race had still to travel before it attained even to such peace and
health and wisdom as it has to-day."
§ 4
Sarnac stopped short in his talk and rose with something between a
laugh and a sigh. He stood facing westward and Sunray stood beside
him.
"This story will go on for ever if I digress like this. See! the sun
will be behind that ridge in another ten minutes. I cannot finish
this evening, because most of the story part still remains to be
told."
"There are roast fowls with sweet corn and chestnuts," said Firefly.
"Trout and various fruits."
"And some of that golden wine?" said Radiant.
"Some of that golden wine."
Sunray, who had been very still and intent, awoke. "Sarnac dear,"
she said, slipping her arm through his. "What became of Uncle John
Julip?"
Sarnac reflected. "I forget," he said.
"Aunt Adelaide Julip died?" asked Willow.
"She died quite soon after we left Cherry Gardens. My uncle wrote, I
remember, and I remember my mother reading the letter at breakfast
like a proclamation and saying, 'Seems if she was reely ill after
all.' If she had not been ill then surely she had carried
malingering to the last extremity. But I forget any particulars
about my uncle's departure from this world. He probably outlived my
mother, and after her death the news of his end might easily have
escaped me."
"You have had the most wonderful dream in the world, Sarnac," said
Starlight, "and I want to hear the whole story and not interrupt, but
I am sorry not to hear more of your Uncle John Julip."
"He was such a perfect little horror," said Firefly....
Until the knife-edge of the hills cut into the molten globe of the
sun, the holiday-makers lingered watching the shadows in their last
rush up to the mountain crests, and then, still talking of this
particular and that in Sarnac's story, the six made their way down to
the guest-house and supper.
"Sarnac was shot," said Radiant. "He hasn't even begun to get shot
yet. There is no end of story still to come."
"Sarnac," asked Firefly, "you weren't killed in the Great War, were
you? Suddenly? In some inconsequent sort of way?"
"Not a bit of it," said Sarnac. "I am really beginning to be shot in
this story though Radiant does not perceive it. But I must tell my
story in my own fashion."
At supper what was going on was explained to the master of the
guest-house. Like so many of these guest-house-keepers he was a
jolly, convivial, simple soul, and he was amused and curious at
Sarnac's alleged experience. He laughed at the impatience of the
others; he said they were like children in a Children's Garden, agog
for their go-to-bed fairy-tale. After they had had coffee they went
out for a time to see the moonlight mingle with the ruddy afterglow
above the peaks; and then the guest-master led the way in, made up a
blazing pinewood fire and threw cushions before it, set out an
after-dinner wine, put out the lights and prepared for a good night's
story-telling.
Sarnac remained thoughtful, looking into the flames until Sunray set
him off again by whispering: "Pimlico?"
§ 5
"I will tell you as briefly as I can of the household in Pimlico
where we joined forces with my mother's old friend, Matilda Good,"
said Sarnac; "but I confess it is hard to be reasonably brief when
one's mind is fuller of curious details than this fire is of sparks."
"That's excellent!" said the master of the guest-house. "That's a
perfect story-teller's touch!" and looked brightly for Sarnac to
continue.
"But we are all beginning to believe that he has been there,"
whispered Radiant, laying a restraining hand on the guest-master's
knee. "And he"--Radiant spoke behind his hand--"he believes it
altogether."
"Not _really_?" whispered the guest-master. He seemed desirous of
asking difficult questions and then subsided into an attention that
was at first a little constrained and presently quite involuntary.
"These houses in Pimlico were part of an enormous proliferation of
houses that occurred between a hundred years and seventy years before
the Great War. There was a great amount of unintelligent building
enterprise in those decades in London, and at the building, as I have
already told you, I think, was done on the supposition that there was
an endless supply of fairly rich families capable of occupying a big
house and employing three or four domestic servants. There were
underground kitchens and servants' rooms, there was a dining-room and
master's study at the ground level, there was a 'drawing-room floor'
above, two rooms convertible into one by a device known as folding
doors, and above this were bedrooms on a scale of diminishing
importance until one came to attics without fire-places in which the
servants were to sleep. In large areas and particularly in Pimlico,
these fairly rich families of the builder's imagination, with servile
domestics all complete, never appeared to claim the homes prepared
for them, and from the first, poorer people, for whom of course no
one had troubled to plan houses, adapted these porticoed plaster
mansions to their own narrower needs. My mother's friend, Matilda
Good, was a quite typical Pimlico householder. She had been the
trusted servant of a rich old lady in Cliffstone who had died and
left her two or three hundred pounds of money----"
The master of the guest-house was endlessly perplexed and made an
interrogative noise.
"Private property," said Radiant very rapidly. "Power of bequest.
Two thousand years ago. Made a Will, you know. Go on, Sarnac."
"With that and her savings," said Sarnac, "she was able to become
tenant of one of these Pimlico houses and to furnish it with a sort
of shabby gentility. She lived herself in the basement below and in
the attic above, and all the rest of the house she had hoped to let
in pieces, floor by floor or room by room, to rich or at least
prosperous old ladies, and to busy herself in tending them and
supplying their needs and extracting a profit and living out of them,
running up and down her staircase as an ant runs up and down a rose
stem tending its aphides. But old ladies of any prosperity did not
come into Pimlico. It was low and foggy, the children of its poorer
streets were rough and disrespectful, and it was close to the river
embankment over which rich, useless old ladies naturally expected to
be thrown. So Matilda Good had to console herself with less
succulent and manageable lodgers.
"I remember Matilda Good giving us an account of those she had as we
sat in her front downstairs room having a kind of tea supper on the
evening of our arrival. Ernest had declined refreshment and
departed, his task as travel conductor done, but there were my mother
and Prue and myself, all in dingy black and all a little stiff and
strange, thawing slowly to tea and hot buttered toast with a poached
egg each, our mouths very full and our eyes and ears very attentive
to Matilda Good.
"She appeared quite a grand lady to me that night. She was much
larger than any lady I had hitherto been accustomed to; she had a
breadth and variety of contour like scenery rather than a human
being; the thought of her veins being varicose, indeed of all her
anatomy being varicose and fantastic, seemed a right and proper one.
She was dressed in black with outbreaks of soiled lace, a large
gold-rimmed brooch fastened her dress at the neck and she had a gold
chain about her, and on her head was what was called a 'cap,' an
affair like the lower shell of an oyster inverted, made of layers of
dingy lace and adorned with a black velvet bow and a gold buckle.
Her face had the same landscape unanatomical quality as her body; she
had a considerable moustache, an overhung slightly mischievous mouth
and two different large dark-grey eyes with a slightly vertical cast
in them and very marked eyelashes. She sat sideways. One eye looked
at you rather sidelong, the other seemed to watch something over your
head. She spoke in a whisper which passed very easily into wheezy,
not unkindly laughter.
"'You'll get no end of exercise on these stairs, my dear,' she said
to sister Prue, 'no end of exercise. There's times when I'm going up
to bed when I start counting 'em, just to make sure that they aren't
taking in lodgers like the rest of us. There's no doubt this 'ouse
will strengthen your legs, my dear. Mustn't get 'em too big and
strong for the rest of you. But you can easy manage that by carrying
something, carrying something every time you go up or down.
Ugh--ugh. That'll equalise you. There's always something to carry,
boots it is, hot water it is, a scuttle of coals or a parcel.'
"'I expect it's a busy 'ouse,' said my mother, eating her buttered
toast like a lady.
"'It's a toilsome 'ouse,' said Matilda Good. 'I don't want to
deceive you, Martha; it's a toilsome 'ouse.
"'But it's a 'ouse that keeps full,' said Matilda Good, challenging
me with one eye and ignoring me with the other. 'Full I am now, and
full I've been since last Michaelmas, full right up; two permanents
I've 'ad three years on end and those my best floors. I've something
to be thankful for, all things considered, and now I got 'elp of a
sort that won't slide downstairs on a tea tray or lick the
ground-floor's sugar lump by lump knowing the lumps was counted and
never thinking that wetness tells, the slut! we'll get on swimmingly.
The sluts I've 'ad, Martha! These board-schools turn them out a
'orror to God and a danger to men. I can't tell you. It's a comfort
to set eyes on any girl as I can see at once 'as been brought up to
take a pride in 'erself. 'Ave a little of that watercress with your
toast, my dear. It'll do that complexion of yours good.'
"My sister Prue reddened and took some watercress.
"'The drawing-room floor,' said Matilda Good, 'is a lady. It isn't
often you keep a lady three years, what with the things they know and
the things they fancy they know, but I've kept her. She's a real
lady--born. Bumpus 'er name is--Miss Beatrice Bumpus. I don't know
whether you'll like her, Martha, when you set eyes on her, but she's
got to be studied. She's a particular sort of Warwickshire Bumpus
that hunts. She'll ask you if you want the vote, Martha, directly
she sees you're a fresh face. It isn't a vote or any old vote she
asks you to want, it's _the_ vote.' The whispering voice grew
thicker and richer and a persuasive smile spread far and wide over
the face. 'If it's all the same to you, Martha, you better say you
do.'
"My mother was sipping her fourth cup of tea. 'I don't know,' she
said, 'as I altogether 'old with this vote.'
"Matilda Good's great red hands, which had been lying apparently
detached in her lap, produced short arms and lace cuffs and waved
about in the air, waving my mother's objections away. ''Old with it
on the drawing-room floor,' wheezed Matilda. ''Old with it on the
drawing-room floor.'
"'But if she arsts questions?'
"'She won't wait to have them answered. It won't be difficult,
Martha. I wouldn't put you into a position of difficulty, not if I
could 'elp it. You just got to 'old with 'er quietly and she'll do
the rest.'
"'Mother,' said Prue, who was still too overawed by Matilda Good to
address her directly. 'Mother, what _is_ this here vote?'
"'Vote for Parliament, my dear,' said Matilda Good.
"'When shall we get it?' asked my mother.
"'You won't get it,' said Matilda Good.
"'But if we did, what should we have to do with it, like?'
"'_Nothing_,' said Matilda Good with bottomless contempt. 'All the
same it's a great movement, Martha, and don't you forget it. And
Miss Bumpus she works night and day, Martha, gets 'it about by
policemen, and once she was actually in prison a night, getting you
and me the vote.'
"'Well, it shows a kind nature,' said my mother.
"'My ground-floor's a gentleman. The worst of 'im is the books there
are to dust, books and books. Not that 'e ever reads 'em much....
Very likely you'll 'ear 'im soon playing his pianola. You can 'ear
it down 'ere almost as if you were inside it. Mr. Plaice, 'e's an
Oxford gentleman and he works at a firm of publishers, Burrows and
Graves, they're called; a very 'igh-class firm I'm told--don't go in
for advertisements or anything vulgar. He's got photographs of Greek
and Latin statues and ruins round above his bookshelves and shields
with College arms. Naked some of the statues are, but for all that
none of them are anything but quite nice and genteel, _quite_
genteel. You can see at once he's a University gentleman. And
photographs of Switzerland he's got. He goes up mountains in
Switzerland and speaks the language. He's a smoker; sets with a pipe
writing or reading evening after evening and marking things with his
pencil. Manuscripts he reads and proofs. Pipes he has with a pipe
for every day in the week, and a smoker's outfit all made with
bee-utiful stone, serpentine they call it, sort of bloodshot green it
is; tobacco-jar and a pot for feathers to clean his pipes, little
places for each day's pipe, everything all of stone; it's a regular
monument. And when you're dusting it--remember if you drop this here
serpentine it breaks like earthenware. Most of the maids I've 'ad
'ave 'ad a chip at that tobacco graveyard of 'is. And mind you----'
Matilda Good leant forward and held out her hand to arrest any
wandering of my mother's attention. '_'E don't 'old with Votes for
Women_! See?'
"'One's got to be careful,' said my mother.
"'One has. He's got one or two little whims, has Mr. Plaice, but if
you mind about them he don't give you much trouble. One of 'is whims
is to pretend to 'ave a bath every morning. Every morning he 'as a
shallow tin bath put out in his room and a can of cold water and a
sponge, and every morning he pretends to splash about in it something
fearful and makes a noise like a grampus singing a hymn--calls it 'is
Tub, he does; though it's a lot more like a canary's saucer. Says he
must have it as cold as possible even if there's ice on it. Well----'
"Matilda Good performed a sort of landslide over the arm of her
chair, her head nodded, and the whisper became more confidential.
'He _doesn't_,' wheezed Matilda Good.
"'You mean he doesn't get into the bath?'
"'Not-tit,' said Matilda Good. 'You can see when he's really been in
by his wet footmarks on the floor. Not 'arf the time does he have
that bath. Per'aps 'e used to have it when he was a young man at
College. I wonder. But it's always got to be put out and the can
always got to be lugged up and poured out and poured away again, and
nobody's ever to ask if he'd like the chill taken off. Not the sort
of thing you ask a University gentleman. No. All the same,' said
Matilda Good, 'all the same I've caught 'im pouring his hand and
shaving water into that water-splash in the winter, after he'd been
going dirty for a week. But have a can of warm? Have the chill
taken off his water? Not Tim! It's curious, ain't it? But that's
one of his whims.
"'I sometimes think,' said Matilda Good still more extravagantly
confidential, 'that perhaps he climbs all those mountains in
Switzerland same way as he takes his bath....'
"She rolled back large portions of her person into a less symmetrical
attitude. 'This Mr. Plaice you must know,' she said, 'has a voice
between a clergyman's and a schoolmaster's, sort of hard and
superior, and when you say anything to him he's apt to make a noise,
"Arrr ... Arrr ... Arrr," a sort of slow neighing it is, as though he
doesn't think much of you but doesn't want to blame you for that and
anyhow can't attend to you properly. You mustn't let it annoy you.
It's the way he's been brought up. And he has a habit of using long
condescending sort of words to you. And calling you insulting names.
He'll think nothing of calling you "My worthy Abigail," or "Come in,
my rosy-fingered Aurora," when you knock in the morning. Just as
though a girl could keep 'er 'ands pink and clean with all these
fires to light! He'll ask of me 'How's the Good Matilda? How's
honest Matilda Good to-day?"--sort of fiddling about with your name.
Of course he don't mean to be rude; it's just his idea of being
pleasant and humorous, and making you feel you're being made fun of
in a gentle sort of way instead of being terrible like he might be,
and--seeing he's good pay and very little trouble, Martha--it's no
good getting offended with him. All the same I can't help thinking
at times of how he'd get on if I answered 'im back, and which of us
two would be left alive if we had a fair match of it, making fun of
one another. The things--the things I could say! But that,' said
Matilda Good, breaking into an ingratiating smile of extraordinary
extent and rolling one eye at me--'is just a dream. It isn't the
sort of dream to indulge in in this 'ouse. I've rehearsed it a bit,
I admit. Says 'e--but never mind what 'e says or what I says back to
him.... Ugh! Ugh! ... He's good pay and regular, my dear; he ain't
likely to lose his job and he ain't likely ever to get another, and
in this Vale anyhow we got to put up with 'is whims. And----'
"Matilda Good spoke as one who confesses to a weakness. 'His pianola
cheers me up at times. I will say that for 'im. It's almost the
only noise one hears from him. Except when he takes off his boots.
"'Well, up above my drawing-room at present is my second floor front,
the Reverend Moggeridge and his good lady. They been here five
months now and they seem like taking root.'
"'Not a clergyman?' said my mother respectfully.
"'A very poor clergyman,' said Matilda, 'but a clergyman. So much to
our credit, Martha. Oh! but they're poor old things! Poor old
things! Been curate or something all his life in some
out-of-the-world place. And lost his job. Somebody had the heart to
turn 'em out. Or something happened. I wonder. 'E's a funny old
man....
"'He dodders off nearly every Saturday on supply, they call it, to
take services somewhere over the Sunday, and like as not he comes
back with his cold worse than ever, sniffing and sniffing. It's
cruel how they treat these poor old parsons on supply, fetch 'em from
the station in open traps they do, in the worst of weather, and often
the rectory tee-total without a drop of anything for a cold.
Christianity! I suppose it's got to be.... The two of them just
potter about upstairs and make shift to get their meals, such as they
are, over the bedroom fire. She even does a bit of her own washing.
Dragging about. Poor old things! Old and forgotten and left about.
But they're very little trouble and there it is. And as I
say--anyhow--he's a clergyman. And in the other room at the back
there's a German lady who teaches--well, anything she can persuade
anyone to be taught. She hasn't been here more than a month, and I
don't know whether I like her or not, but she seems straight enough
and she keeps herself pretty much to herself and when one has a room
to let one can't always pick and choose.
"'And that's the lot, my dear. To-morrow we'll have to begin.
You'll go up presently and settle into your two rooms at the top.
There's a little one for Mortimer and a rather bigger one for you and
Prue. There's pegs and curtains for your things. I'm next door to
you. I'll give you my little old alarum clock and show you all about
it and to-morrow at seven sharp down we come, you and me and Prue.
My Lord, I suppose, has the privilege of his sex and doesn't come
down until half-past! Oh! I'm a suffragette, Martha,--same as Miss
Bumpus. First thing is this fire, and unless we rake the ashes well
forward the boiler won't heat. Then there's fires and boots, dust
the front rooms and breakfasts: Mr. Plaice at eight sharp and mind it
is, and Miss Bumpus at eight-thirty, and get away with Mr. Plaice if
you can first because of the shortness of tablespoons. Five I got
altogether and before I lost my last third floor back I 'ad seven.
'E was a nice lot; 'e was. The old people get their own breakfast
when they want it, and Frau Buchholz has a tray, just bread and
butter and tea, whenever we can manage it after the drawing-room's
been seen to. That's the programme, Martha.'
"'I'll do my best, 'Tilda,' said my mother. '_As_ you know.'
"'Hullo!' said Matilda indicating the ceiling, 'the concert's going
to begin. That bump's him letting down the pianola pedals.'
"And then suddenly through the ceiling into our subterranean
tea-party came a rush of Clavier notes--I can't describe it.
"One of the few really good things of that age was the music.
Mankind perfected some things very early; I suppose precious-stone
work and gold work have never got very much beyond the levels it
reached under the Seventeenth Dynasty in Egypt, ages ago, and marble
statuary came to a climax at Athens before the conquests of
Alexander. I doubt if there has ever come very much sweeter music
into the world than the tuneful stuff we had away back there in the
Age of Confusion. This music Mr. Plaice was giving us was some bits
of Schumann's _Carnaval_ music; we hear it still played on the
Clavier; and it was almost the first good music I ever heard. There
had been brass bands on Cliffstone promenade, of course, but they
simply made a glad row. I don't know if you understand what a
pianola was. It was an instrument for playing the Clavier with
hammers directed by means of perforated rolls, for the use of those
who lacked the intelligence and dexterity to read music and play the
Clavier with their hands. Because everyone was frightfully unhandy
in those days. It thumped a little and struck undiscriminating
chords, but Mr. Plaice managed it fairly well and the result came,
filtered through the ceiling---- As we used to say in those days, it
might have been worse.
"At the thoughts of that music I recall--and whenever I hear Schumann
as long as I live I shall recall--the picture of that underground
room, the little fire-place with the kettle on a hob, the
kettle-holder and the toasting fork beside the fire-place jamb, the
steel fender, the ashes, the small blotched looking-glass over the
mantel, the little china figures of dogs in front of the glass, the
gaslight in a frosted glass globe hanging from the ceiling and
lighting the tea-things on the table. (Yes, the house was lit by
coal-gas; electric light was only just coming in.... My dear
Firefly! can I possibly stop my story to tell you what coal-gas was?
A good girl would have learnt that long ago.)
"There sat Matilda Good reduced to a sort of imbecile ecstasy by
these butterflies of melody. She nodded her cap, she rolled her head
and smiled; she made appreciative rhythmic gestures with her hands;
one eye would meet you in a joyous search for sympathy while the
other contemplated the dingy wall-paper beyond. I too was deeply
stirred. But my mother and sister Prue sat in their black with an
expression of forced devotion, looking very refined and correct,
exactly as they had sat and listened to my father's funeral service
five days before.
"'Sputiful,' whispered my mother, like making a response in church,
when the first piece came to an end....
"I went to sleep that night in my little attic with fragments of
Schumann, Bach and Beethoven chasing elusively about my brain. I
perceived that a new phase of life had come to me....
"Jewels," said Sarnac. "Some sculpture, music--just a few lovely
beginnings there were already of what man could do with life. Such
things I see now were the seeds of the new world of promise already
there in the dark matrix of the old."
§ 6