MAINLY COMMERCIAL
AS soon as Philip's bodily mechanism would permit, flat-hunting
expeditions were organised, and eventually resulted in the leasing of an
_appartement_ near Albert Gate. The rooms stood high up, overlooking the
Park, and were described by the agent and Timothy as "a lovely little
bachelor suite," and "a self-contained monkey-house" respectively.
Furnishing followed. One fine morning a party consisting of Peggy, Miss
Leslie, Philip, and Timothy set out to purchase household equipment of
every kind. It was a disastrous expedition. All four were in a mood for
enjoyment, and their high spirits, as very often happens when the young
of the two sexes combine to transact business jointly, took the form of
helpless, speechless, and unseemly laughter. If a majestic shop-walker,
addressing the party as a whole, enquired what he might have the
pleasure of showing to them, every one waited for some one else to
reply: then, after a pause, every one replied at once. An untimely
explosion followed, and the party turned on its heel and hurried,
panic-stricken, into the street.
Timothy was at the bottom of the trouble. He began the day by marching
into Harrods's and ordering a funeral; repudiating the contract, after
ten minutes of ghoulish detail, upon the plea of having suddenly
remembered that the deceased had expressed a desire to be buried at sea,
and asking instead to be directed to the Canadian canoe department.
Later, he conducted his followers to the establishment of an extremely
select and most expensive bootmaker in St. James's. The whole party were
ushered with much solemnity into an apartment upon the first
floor--Timothy wearing a face of intense gravity, Philip in a gentle
perspiration, and Peggy and Miss Leslie dumbly gripping one another's
fingers. The room was plainly but expensively furnished. Upon a pedestal
in one corner stood a plaster cast of a Royal foot.
Two serious gentlemen in frock-coats stood awaiting them. These, after
providing chairs and offering a few observations upon the weather and
the Parliamentary situation, inquired Timothy's pleasure.
"I want a Wellington boot," said Timothy.
The stouter of the two serious gentlemen touched a bell; whereupon a
third gentleman in a frock-coat appeared.
"A pair of hunting-tops," announced the stout man.
The newcomer brought a small stool, and lowering himself upon knee with
knightly grace, began to grope under Timothy's chair for one of
Timothy's feet.
"Not for myself," explained Timothy. "For a grand-uncle of
mine--Lieutenant-Colonel Busby, of the Indian Army."
"If the Colonel," suggested the senior frock-coat deferentially, "would
favour us with a call, we could measure him for a pair more satis--"
"Not a pair," corrected Timothy. "I said just one. My grand-uncle had
the misfortune to lose a leg in Afghanistan in eighteen-sixty-seven, so
naturally he does not require two boots. Besides, I doubt if he could
call on you. He goes out very seldom now: he is almost bedridden, in
fact. All he wants is a number nine Wellington boot. Have you got one?"
The frock-coats conferred in mysterious whispers, while the two ladies
did not cease to cling to one another.
"We should be happy to make the boot, sir," was the final verdict. "Is
it for the right foot or left?"
Timothy's face expressed the utmost dismay.
"I have entirely forgotten," he said. "It is unpardonably stupid of me."
He turned to the cowering Philip.
"Cousin Theophilus," he said, "can you recollect which leg it was that
Uncle Hannibal lost?"
"The right, I think," said Philip hoarsely. "Not sure, though. Don't
rely on me."
Tim turned to Peggy.
"Cousin Geraldine?" he enquired.
"The left, I believe," replied Peggy composedly.
Timothy gave a perplexed smile, and turned to Miss Leslie.
"We must leave it with you to decide, Aunt Keziah," he said. "What have
you to say?"
"Honk, honk honk!" replied Aunt Keziah wildly. Timothy rose to his feet,
and smiled apologetically upon the gentlemen in frock-coats.
"I fear," he said, "that there is nothing for it but to go home and
look. Good-morning!"
* * * * *
After two hours of this sort of imbecility the troupe found itself
consuming ices in Bond Street, having become possessed so far of two
bath-mats and a waste-paper basket.
"Now we must be serious," announced Miss Leslie, wiping her eyes. She
had learned to her cost this morning that no woman is ever too old to be
immune from a fit of the giggles. "Mr. Rendle, will you kindly go home?"
Timothy's only reply was to dash out of the tea-shop and into an
optician's on the other side of the street. Presently he returned,
putting something in his pocket.
"Fall in and follow me!" he commanded.
"Where are we going to?" enquired Peggy, as the expedition meekly
complied.
"International Furniture Company," was the brisk reply.
Timothy's dupes regarded one another more hopefully.
"That sounds like business," said Philip. "Come along!"
But Timothy's exuberance was not yet exhausted. On approaching the
stately premises of the International Furniture Company he suddenly
produced a pair of tinted spectacles from his pocket and put them on.
Then, assuming the piping voice and humped shoulders of doddering
senility, he took the scandalised Miss Leslie by the arm, and limping
through the great doorway of the shop, demanded the immediate presence
of the manager of the Antique Furniture Department.
On the appearance of that functionary, Tim bade him a courtly
good-morning, and said:--
"I desire first of all to inspect your dining-room suites. We are
setting this young couple"--indicating Philip, who flushed crimson, and
Peggy, who exhibited no confusion whatever--"up in a flat."
The manager, a short-sighted young man with a nervous manner, after a
startled inspection of the decrepit figure before him, turned upon his
heel and led the way to the dining-room suites. Timothy hobbled after,
leaning heavily upon Miss Leslie's arm and coughing asthmatically.
"Tim, you young ass," urged Philip, hot with shame on Peggy's account,
"dry up!"
The relentless humourist took not the slightest notice. Instead, he
addressed the back of the manager.
"The young folk!" he wheezed--"the young folk! The old story! The time
comes when they must leave the nest. My little bird"--here he laid a
palsied hand upon the shoulder of Peggy, who choked noisily--"has flown
away at last. It took her a long time to find her wings,--at one time I
thought she was never going to do it,--but all's well that ends well, as
Will Shakespeare puts it. My little bird has found a nest of her
own--with honest John, here; and damme! her old grandad is going to
furnish it for her! Are these your dining-room suites? They don't make
furniture like they did in my young days, when Bob Chippendale and Nick
Sheraton were alive. I remember--"
"I like this oak table very much," said Miss Leslie to Philip, in a high
and trembling voice. "I wonder if there are chairs to match it."
But before any business could be transacted the irrepressible
octogenarian was off again.
"Dearest Pamela," he said affectionately to Miss Leslie, "how well I
remember the day that we two bought our wedding furniture together! We
made a handsome couple, you and I. You wore a crinoline, with a black
bombazine tippet; and I was in nankeen overalls and a fob. I was a mad
wag in those days: I remember I offered to fight the shopman to decide
the price of a harpsichord--or was it a spinet?--that I considered he
asked too much for. But times have changed. I suppose you never fight
your customers now to save chaffering, young man? If you do, all honour
to you! I like to see ancient customs kept up." He surveyed the
flinching vendor of dining-room suites with puckered eyes. "I am an old
fellow now, and I fear I would hardly give you full measure. But if you
have any inclination for a bout with the mufflers,"--a relentless hand
descended upon the fermenting Philip and drew him forward,--"my
son-in-law here, honest John--"
But the manager, murmuring something inarticulate about a
telephone-call, turned tail and fled, his place being taken by a man of
more enduring fibre.
And so on.
They got home about six, having purchased an imitation walnut wardrobe
which they did not want.
"We simply _had_ to buy something after all that," said honest John.
* * * * *
A week later the flat was sufficiently furnished to be habitable, and
the new tenants moved in.
It was about this time that Philip began to realise the portent and
significance of a mysterious female figure, resembling an elderly and
intensely respectable spectre, which had been dogging his footsteps and
standing meekly aside for him upon staircases ever since he entered into
possession. With the arrival of the furniture the apparition
materialised into a diminutive and sprightly dame in a black bonnet, who
introduced herself as Mrs. Grice, and asked that she and her husband
might be employed as the personal attendants of Philip and Tim. The pair
resided in some subterranean retreat in the basement, and their
services, it appeared, were at the disposal of such of the tenants of
the building as possessed no domestic staff of their own. Mrs. Grice
could cook, darn, scrub, and dust; while Mr. Grice (whose impeccability
might be gauged from the fact that he suffered slightly from gout and
possessed a dress-suit) could wait at table and act as valet to the
gentlemen.
Philip was alone when the assault was delivered, and capitulated at
once, a natural inclination to wait until he had consulted Peggy being
overridden by constitutional inability to say "No" to a lady. The
bargain concluded, Mrs. Grice advanced briskly to practical details.
"Now, sir," she said, "I see you 'ave your furniture comin' in. And very
nice furniture, too," she added encouragingly. "But if you'll allow me,
I should like to consult you about the fixtures. I always likes to be
businesslike with my gentlemen. There's that curtain-pole over the
window. That was given me by Sir Percy Peck, the gentleman what had the
flat last. He said to me, just as he was leaving,--he was leaving to be
married to Lady Ader Evings, and they sent me a pink ticket for the
wedding, but I couldn't go, what with my daughter losing 'er 'usband
about that time and Grice getting one of his legs, so it was wasted, not
bein' transferable--well, he says to me, says Sir Percy: 'That
curtain-pole is a present from me to you, Mrs. Grice.'"
The recipient of the departed Sir Percy's bounty paused to inhale a
large quantity of sorely needed breath. Philip, who had written out a
cheque only two days previously for all the fixtures in the flat, waited
meekly.
"Now, sir," continued Mrs. Grice briskly, "what shall I do with that
curtain-pole? Shall I 'ave it took down, or would it be any convenience
to you to buy it from me?"
"I have an idea, Mrs. Grice," said Philip, plucking up courage, "that I
took over all the fixtures from the landlord."
"Right, sir, _quite_ right!" assented Mrs. Grice promptly. "But those
were landlord's fixtures. I'm talking about tenant's fixtures. I dare
say," she added indulgently, "that you didn't know about them. Perhaps
you haven't taken a flat before. Well, Sir Percy, he says to me: 'That
curtain-pole is a present from me to you, Mrs. Grice.' Now, sir, will
you have that pole took down, or will you take it off me 'ands?"
"After all," argued Philip to himself, "I daresay the old lady needs the
money more than I do; and in any case she appears to think the rotten
thing is hers, which will mean my getting another; so--"
"Certainly I will take it, Mrs. Grice," he said. "Er--how much do you
want for it?"
At the mention of money Mrs. Grice became greatly flustered.
"Really, sir, I would rather leave it to you," she protested. "A
gentleman knows more about such things than what I do. I am quite sure
you will give me a fair price for it."
Philip, feeling perfectly certain that he would not, again pressed Mrs.
Grice to name a figure. Finally the old lady overcame her extreme
delicacy of feeling sufficiently to suggest ten shillings.
"But we must be fair about it, sir," she insisted. "I don't want to
overcharge you." She paused, as if struck by a sudden thought. "I'll
tell you what, sir,--we'll ask a third party!"
Next moment Mrs. Grice was at the door.
"Grice!" she called shrilly.
"Commin', Emmer," replied a husky voice, and Mr. Grice sidled into the
room with uncanny suddenness.
"How much, Grice," enquired his helpmeet, pointing to the curtain-pole,
"would you think was a fair price for that pole? A _fair_ price, mind!"
Mr. Grice fixed his wandering and watery eyes upon the article under
consideration, and ruminated. Finally:--
"Ten shillin'," he said.
Mrs. Grice turned to Philip with a smile of delighted surprise.
"Well, I declare!" she exclaimed. "I was about right, after all, sir."
Philip, quite overwhelmed by this convincing coincidence of judgment,
announced humbly that he would take the curtain-pole.
"I had better pay for it now," he said.
"One moment, sir, if you please!" replied Mrs. Grice.
Darting out on to the landing she reappeared almost instantly, heralded
by a sonorous clang, carrying a bedroom ewer and basin.
"Now these things, sir," she announced, "belongs to Grice. They were Sir
Percy's present to him. 'Grice,' he said, just as he was leaving to
marry Lady Ader Evings, 'this jug and basin are yours now: they are my
present from me to you.' Didn't he, Grice?"
Mr. Grice was understood to mumble assent. Mrs. Grice took another
breath. It is hardly necessary to add that within the next thirty
seconds Philip had become the reluctant owner of a chipped jug and
basin, recently the property of a baronet.
Mrs. Grice swept on.
"Now, sir," she continued, with unabated vigour, "these fire-irons--"
But at this moment, to Philip's unspeakable relief, Timothy arrived, and
took command of the situation at once. Philip put on his hat and went
for a walk in the Park.
"We had great fun," reported Timothy on his return. "The last thing she
tried to sell me was the fireplace. (I think it was Sir Percy's parting
gift to the cat.) I said that I had no money and that they had better
take it away. That spiked her guns. And now, my lad, you are going to
put on your best duds and come poodle-faking with me!"