CAPTAIN POLKINGTON
Captain Polkington was watching a pan of jam. It was the middle of the
day and warm; too warm to be at work out of doors, as Johnny was, at
least so the Captain thought. He also thought it too warm to watch jam
in the back kitchen and that occupation, though it was the cooler of
the two, had the further disadvantage of being beneath his dignity.
The dignity was suffering a good deal; was it right, he asked himself,
that he, the man of the house, should have the menial task of watching
jam while Julia talked business with some one in the parlour? He did
not know what business this person had come on; he had seen him arrive
a few minutes back, had even heard his name--Mr. Alexander Cross--but
that was all he knew about him; Julia had taken him into the parlour
and shut the door. Naturally her father felt it and was annoyed.
There was a door leading into the parlour from the front kitchen. It
was fast closed but the Captain, leaving the jam to attend to itself,
went and looked at it. While he was standing there he heard three
words spoken on the other side by the visitor; they were--"your new
daffodil."
So that was the business this man had come on! He was trying to buy
Julia's ugly streaked flower. The Captain's weak mouth set straight;
he felt very strongly about the daffodil and his daughter's refusal
to sell it. He knew she might have done so; she had had a good many
letters about it since it was exhibited in London. She said little
about the offers they contained, but he knew she refused them all; he
had taxed her with it and argued the question to no purpose. Now,
to-day, it seemed there was a man so anxious to buy the thing that he
had actually come to see her; and she, of course, would refuse again.
The Captain sat down in the easy-chair; he was overcome by the thought
of Julia's contrary stupidity.
The chair was near the door, but he would have scouted the idea that
he was listening; he was a man of honour, and why should he wish to
hear Julia refuse good money? Also it was impossible to hear all that
was said unless the speakers were close to the door. Apparently they
must have been near for no sooner had he sat down than he heard the
man say, "Haven't I had the pleasure of seeing you somewhere before,
Miss Snooks? Your face seems familiar though I can't exactly locate
it."
"We met at Marbridge," Julia answered; "at a dance, a year and a half
ago."
"At Marbridge? Oh, of course! Funny I shouldn't have remembered when I
heard your name the other day!"
Captain Polkington did not think it at all funny; he did not know who
Mr. Cross might be, nobody important he judged by his voice and
manner--hostesses at Marbridge often had to import extra nondescript
men for their dances. But whoever he was, if he had been there once he
might go there again and carry with him the tale of Julia's doings and
home and other things detrimental to the Polkington pride. The Captain
listened to hear one of the two in the other room refer to the change
of name which had prevented an earlier recognition. But neither did;
she saw no reason for it, and he had forgotten her original name if he
ever knew it.
"I remember all about you now," he was saying; "you danced with me
several times and asked me about the Van Heigens' blue daffodil"--he
paused as if a new idea had occurred to him. "You were not in the line
then, I suppose?" he asked.
"No, I knew nothing about flower growing or selling," she answered.
"What you told me of the value of the blue daffodil was a revelation
to me."
He laughed a little. "But one you'll try to profit by," he said.
The Captain moved in his chair. He could have groaned aloud at the
words, which represented precisely what Julia would not do.
Unfortunately his movement had much the same effect as his groan would
have done, some one on the other side of the door moved too, and in
the opposite direction. It must have been Julia, her father was sure
of it; it was like her to do it; she must have gone almost to the
window; he could not make out what was said. The man was no doubt
trying to buy the bulb; a stray word here and there indicated that,
but it was impossible to hear what offer was made. It was equally
impossible to hear what Julia said; her father only caught the
inflection of her voice, but he was sure she was refusing.
In disgust and anger he rose and, having pulled the jam to the side of
the fire, went into the garden. There he took the hoe and started
irritably to work on a bed near the front door; it was some relief to
his feelings to scratch the ground since he could not scratch anything
else.
In a little while Cross came out. "Well, if you won't, you won't," he
was saying as Julia opened the door. "I think you are making a
mistake; in fact, if you weren't a lady I should say you were acting
rather like a fool; but, of course, you must please yourself. If you
think better of it you can always write to me. Just name the price, a
reasonable price, that's all you need do. We understand one another,
and we can do business without any fuss--you have my address?"
He gave her a card as he spoke, although she assured him she should
not want it; then he took his leave.
She watched him go, tearing up the card when he had set off down the
road. Captain Polkington watched her.
"What did he want?" he asked, remembering that he was not supposed to
know.
"The bulb," she answered.
"And you would not sell it?"
"No."
She had come from the doorstep now to pull up some weeds he had
overlooked.
"I can't understand you, Julia," he said resting on his hoe, and
speaking as much in sorrow as in anger. "You seem to have so little
sense of honour--women so seldom have--but I should have thought that
you would have had a lesson on the necessity, the obligation of paying
debts. When you come to think of the efforts we are making to pay
those debts, how I am straining every nerve, giving almost the whole
of my income, doing without everything but the barest necessaries,
without some things that are necessaries in my state of health, what
your mother is doing, how she has given up her home, her husband, to
live almost on charity in her son-in-law's house. When you think of
all that, I say, and of what your sisters have done, it does seem
strange that you should grudge this bulb, simply and solely because it
was given you by some people for whom you care nothing."
Julia agreed; she never saw the purpose of contradicting when
conviction was out of the question. "It does seem strange," she said;
"but there is one comfort, the worst of the debts will be cleared off
by the end of the year. Uncle William knows that and has arranged for
it in his own mind; I really think it would be almost a pity to
disturb the business plans of any one so exact."
"Are we," the Captain returned scornfully, "to pinch and save to the
end of the year? Am I to do without the few comforts that might make
life tolerable? Am I to work like a farm labourer and live like one
till then, because you choose to keep this bulb?"
Julia thought it was very probable things would go on as they were for
some time, but she did not say so; she only said, "I am sorry you find
it so trying."
"Trying!" her father said, and stopped, as if he found the word and
most others very inadequate. "After all, it does not much matter," he
remarked in a tone of gloomy resignation. "I shan't be here, in any
one's way, much longer; there is not the least chance that I shall
live till the end of the year, and when I am gone you can do what you
please, what you must, with your bulb. I own I should like to see you
a little more comfortable and better off now. I hate to have you doing
servant's work and going shabby as you have to. I should like you to
be decently dressed, taking your proper place in society, but if you
think it right to go on as you are and to keep your bulb, of course I
have nothing to say."
It was as well he had nothing, for Julia remembered the jam and went
indoors, so he would have had no one to say it to. She went into the
back kitchen, thinking, but not of the jam. Once again the temptation
to sell the daffodil beset her; not to Cross, he was the last man to
whom she would have sold it, but to some collector who would care for
it as the Van Heigens would. She could easily find such a one with or
without assistance from Cross; little harm would be done to the Van
Heigens by it; indeed Joost had expected her to do no less, and if she
did it she could pay--not the debts her father had mentioned--but the
one he had not. She had thought this all out before, seen the
arguments on both sides, and arrived at her conclusion; but there are
some things that are not content with this treatment once, nor even
twice, but demand it a good many more times than that. So she thought
it out again and came again to the old conclusion. Joost had given her
the bulb because he loved her; he had made no conditions because he
believed in her; he had even professed himself content that she should
sell it because, in his humbleness and generosity, he wanted only that
she should get what ease she could. He was content to make what was to
him a great sacrifice for no other reason than that she should have a
little more money on mere caprice, the very nature of which he did not
know. And so she could not do it, that was the end of the whole
matter. She could not take the gift of the man who loved her to pay a
debt to the man she loved.
She went to fetch jam pots, without calling herself to order for the
last admission. It was the one luxury she had at that time; daily and
nightly she could admit to herself that she loved him and he loved
her. Not exactly passionately--they were not passionate people, she
told herself--but in an odd companionable equal sort of way which was
the best in the world. Nothing would ever come of it, even in the
remote future when her father was dead and the debt paid. By that time
both of them would have grown old and set in their far separate ways,
and even if he ever heard that she was free he would have become
wiser and changed his mind. So there was no end to this thing, no
awakening and disillusioning, none of the disappointment and
dreariness which is likely to attend the translating of a dream into
work-a-day life. For that reason it should have been possible to be
content, even with the thing which stood between her and
realisation--sometimes it almost was, at least she persuaded herself
so. At others there were things harder to control; brief moments when
crushing down all opposition and obliterating other thoughts, came the
memory of how she had crouched behind the chopping-block, how hidden
her tears in his coat. There was no reason or common-sense in that, no
friendship or good-fellowship in the clasp of his arms; it was the
natural man and the natural woman, and absence could not change it,
nor time take it away; it had been, it might be again, it obeyed no
law and answered to no argument in the world. It was something which
made her ashamed and afraid and yet glad with a rare incommunical
gladness that was pointed with pain.
Just then the jam boiled over, and she had to leave her pots to run
and save it.
It is a great thing to have your mind under fair control; the
Polkington training, wherein the advisable and advantageous were
compelled to rank high even in matter of emotion, is not without use
in bringing this about. But it is also a great thing, almost, perhaps,
a more important one for some people, to have plenty to do even if it
is only making jam.
While Julia made her jam Captain Polkington hoed; at least he did for
a little while, then he gradually ceased and stood leaning upon his
hoe, lost in unhappy thought. At last he moved, and, gathering the
withering weeds that lay beside the path, carried them to an old
basket which he had left beside the garden wall. With the weeds he
picked up the torn fragments of card which Julia had dropped beside
the doorstep; he let them fall into the basket with the other rubbish,
but when he saw them gleaming white among the green they arrested his
attention. For a moment he looked at them, then he carefully picked
them out; he had some thought of appealing to Julia once more, or
telling her that he had saved the man's address for her and she had
one last chance. He sat down on the wall; would it be any good to
appeal? he asked himself despondently. Would anything be any good? Was
not everything a failure? No one regarded him; Cross, the man whose
card he held, had not even glanced in his direction when he went down
the path. A miserable bargain-driving tradesman had passed him and
paid no more attention to him than if he had been a gardener! Gillat,
his own friend, did not regard him, thought nothing of his comforts;
he was all for Julia; thought of nothing and no one else. As for Julia
herself, she had not the slightest regard for him, no consideration,
not even filial respect and obedience.
He looked gloomily before him for a little, then his eye fell on the
white fragments he held, the address of the man who was anxious to buy
the daffodil which Julia in her obstinate folly and selfish
unreasonableness, would not sell. If it only were sold! He thought
over all the good things that could then be done; they were the same
as those excellent reasons that he had himself given a little while
back. Some people might have said they were rather diverse and not all
mutually inclusive, but no such idea troubled him; he was sure all
could easily have been done if the daffodil were sold. He felt that he
could have done it all quite well, he did not stop to think how--if he
had had the handling of the money he could have been a benefactor to
his whole family, especially Julia. It was hard that he should be
prevented, bitterly hard; it had so often happened in his life that he
had been prevented from doing what was good and useful by want of
means and opportunity or the stupid obstinacy of other people. He grew
more and more depressed as he sat on the wall thinking of these things
and wondering if there were many men so useless, so unfortunate and
misunderstood as he.
This depression lasted all that day and on into the next; indeed, for
some time longer. It lifted a little once in the course of a week, but
not much, and soon settled down again, making the Captain very
miserable, disinclined for work, and decidedly bad company. Johnny
thought he was not well, but Julia fancied his trouble had something
to do with annoyance and the daffodil. He did not confide in either of
them, maintaining a proud and gloomy silence and nursing his grievance
so that it grew. For days he cherished his sense of injury and wrong,
until it became large and took a good hold upon him. Then, all at
once, for no reason that one can give, a change came, and his mind, as
if smitten by a gust of wind, began to veer about, to stir and
lighten. Why, he suddenly asked himself, was it that Julia would not
sell the bulb? Because--the answer was so absurdly simple he wondered
it had not occurred to him before--because it was the Van Heigens'
present, and one cannot sell presents. He perfectly understood the
scruple, honoured it even; but he also saw quite plainly that, though
it prevented her from selling the daffodil, it did not stand in the
way of its being sold. She could not, of course, authorise the sale,
any more than she could conduct it; but that was no reason why she
should not be very pleased to have it sold. Indeed, not only was this
a probability, practically a certainty, but more than likely she had
had some such idea in her mind when she spoke of the matter to her
father--in all likelihood she was wondering now why he had not taken
the hint.
Thus Captain Polkington reasoned, seeing light at last in the dimness
of the depression which had possessed him. Quite how much he really
believed, or even if he were capable of real reasonable belief at this
stage of his career, it is not easy to say. It is possible he may have
thought he was right for the time being; his conscience was capable of
remarkable gymnastic feats at times. It is also possible that he, like
some others of the human race, was not really able to think at all.
Anyhow the depression that weighed upon him lifted, and he remembered
with satisfaction that he had kept the torn fragments of Cross' card.
In the early part of the summer the hyacinths, tulips, and finer
narcissus had been taken out of the ground and put to dry. Julia hoped
by this means to get more and better flowers from them next year than
is the case when they are left in the earth. They took some time to
dry and were not really ready till the summer was far advanced; but
that did not matter to her, however it may have inconvenienced her
father; she was too busy to attend to them earlier. By the middle of
August they were ready, and she set to cleaning them in her spare time
with Johnny to help her. He was proud and pleased to do so, and did
not in the least mind the extreme irritation of the skin which befalls
those who rub off the old loose husks. A place was prepared for the
bulbs in one of the sheds, the wide shelf cleared and partitions made
in it by Mr. Gillat, who also spent some time in writing labels for
each of the divisions. Julia told him this was unnecessary as she knew
by the shape which were hyacinths and which tulips; still he did it.
Captain Polkington did not offer any assistance; he merely looked on
with indifferent interest; the matter did not seem to concern him.
But one day, towards the end of the month, but before the bulbs were
all done, Julia went into the town.
Captain Polkington saw her start; then he wandered to the shed where
Johnny was at work. For a little he stood watching, then he walked
leisurely round the place looking at this and that.
"You will never be able to tell which is which of these things," he
remarked at last.
Johnny looked at his somewhat conspicuous labels. "I've named them,
don't you see 'Tulips?'"
"But you don't say what sort of tulips, which are red and which
yellow. Nor what sort of narcissus, which are daffodils and which the
bunchy things."
"No," Mr. Gillat admitted; "no, they got mixed in the digging up; I
forgot, and put them all in the barrow together; that's how it
happened."
"What? The whole lot?" the Captain inquired. "The streaked daffodil
and all? What did Julia say?"
"She said it did not matter," Johnny told him; "they'll be all the
more surprise to us when they come up next year."
"She didn't mind, not even about the streaked daffodil?"
"Oh, that was not there," Mr. Gillat said, serenely unconscious that
the fate of that bulb was the only interest. "We have got that by
itself."
He showed a little piece of shelf penned off from the rest and
carefully covered with wire netting for fear of rats. Three different
shaped bulbs were there in a row.
"That's it," Johnny said, pointing to one of the three. "And that end
one is the red tulip with the black middle; it is supposed to be very
good; and that other is the double blue hyacinth from down by the
gate; we are going to try it in a pot in the house next year and have
it bloom early."
Captain Polkington nodded, but did not show much interest. "Did you
put these here, or did she?" he asked.
"She did," Johnny answered. "She cleans them much better than I do,
and we knew they were choice ones, the best one of each kind, so she
cleaned them; but I made the wire cover."
The Captain did not praise the ingenuity of this contrivance, which he
did not admire at all, and soon afterwards he sauntered back to the
house. He was dozing in the easy-chair in the front kitchen when
Johnny came in to change his coat before setting out to meet Julia. He
did not seem to have moved much when Mr. Gillat came down-stairs ready
to start.
"What?" he roused himself to say when Johnny announced his
destination. "Oh, all right, you need not have waked me to tell me
that, it really is of no importance to me if you like to walk in the
blazing sun." He settled himself afresh in the chair, muttering
something about the heat, and Johnny went out, quietly closing the
door after him.
It was an hour later when Julia and the faithful Johnny came back, the
latter decidedly hot although he was carrying one of the lightest of
the parcels. Captain Polkington was still in his chair; he woke up as
they entered.
"Why," he said, "I must have dropped asleep!" He rose and went to take
Julia's parcels. "Let me put these away for you," he said
solicitiously; "it is a great deal too hot for you to be walking in
the sun and carrying all these things."
"Thank you," Julia answered; "that's all right. Perhaps you would not
mind getting the tea, though; if you would do that I should be glad."
He did mind, but he set about it, and it was perhaps well for him that
he did, as otherwise he might have paid a suspicious number of fidgety
attentions to Julia. As it was, doing the menial work which he always
considered beneath his dignity, while Johnny sat still and rested,
restored him to his usual manner.
But the Captain, though he was safely past the initial difficulty, did
not find the working out of his scheme altogether easy. He had the
bulb, it is true, and he was safe from detection for there was still
under the wire cover a smooth yellow-brown narcissus root very like
the first one; but he had got to get rid of it. It was not very easy
to get a letter to the post here without remark from Mr. Gillat. That,
in the circumstances, would be undesirable for it was likely to arouse
Julia's suspicions, and if they were roused she might think it her
duty to interfere--even though, of course, she did wish the bulb sold.
Her father recognised that and, determining not to give her the
opportunity, got his letter written betimes and waited for a chance to
give it to the postman unobserved. In writing he had been faced by one
very great difficulty, he had not the least idea how much to ask.
Cross had said "name a reasonable price," and he must name one, or
else it would appear that he were writing on his own behalf not
Julia's; but he did not know what was reasonable and he had no chance
of finding out. A new orchid, he had vaguely heard, was sometimes
worth a hundred pounds; but it was impossible any one should pay so
much for a daffodil, an ordinary garden flower. Julia, whatever her
motive, would not have refused to sell it if it would have fetched so
much; he could not conceive of a Polkington, especially a poor one,
turning her back on a hundred pounds. For hours he thought about this
and at last decided to ask twenty pounds. It seemed more to him now
than it would have done a year ago, by reason of the small sums he had
handled lately; but it was a good deal less than his golden dreams had
painted the bulb to be worth in the time when it seemed unattainable,
and he was paying debts and providing for Julia out of the proceeds of
the imaginary sale. Still, he finally decided to ask it and wrote to
that effect, and after some waiting for the opportunity got the letter
posted.
After that there followed an unpleasant time or suspense, made the
more unpleasant by the fact that he had to look out for the postman as
he did not want the return letter to fall into Julia's hands. At last,
after a longer time than he expected, the reply came safely to hand.
This was it--
"SIR,
"I am obliged to decline your offer of the streaked daffodil
bulb, the price you name being absurd. To tell the plain
truth, I would rather not do business with you in the
matter; I prefer to deal with principals, else in these
cases there is little guarantee of good faith.
"Yours faithfully,
"ALEXANDER CROSS."
"P. S.--If you should fail to dispose of your bulb elsewhere
and it would be a convenience to you, I will give you a five
pound note for it, that is, if you can guarantee it genuine.
It is not, under the circumstances, worth more to me.
"A. C."
So the Captain read and then re-read; anger, mortification and
disappointment preventing him from grasping the full meaning at
first. Five pounds, only five pounds! No wonder Julia would not sell
her bulb; no wonder she preferred to keep a present that would only
fetch five pounds! What was such a trifle? The Captain glared at the
letter as he asked himself the question proudly. His pride was badly
wounded. Cross had not set him right in his mistaken idea of the
daffodil's value too politely; at least he thought not. Why should he,
this tradesman, say he preferred to deal with principals? Did he
imagine that a gentleman would attempt to sell him a spurious bulb?
The Captain's honour was not of that sort and he felt outraged. He
felt outraged, too, almost insulted, at being told that the price was
absurd. The absurd thing was that he should be expected to know
anything about trade or trade prices. "The man can have no idea of my
position," he thought.
But there he was not quite correct; it was precisely because he had a
suspicion of the position that Cross had written thus. No one with any
right to it would offer the true bulb for twenty pounds; either, so he
argued, it was stolen or not genuine; which, he did not know, the odds
were about even. After making a few inquiries at Marbridge into
Captain Polkington's history he came to the conclusion that the chance
in favour of the true bulb was worth five pounds to him. Accordingly
he offered it, indifferent as to the result, but rather anticipating
its acceptance.
It was accepted. The Captain was mortified and disappointed, but five
pounds is five pounds. It even seems a good deal more when your income
is very small and the part of it which you handle yourself so much
smaller as to amount to nothing worth mentioning. It was September
now, and already the mornings and evenings were cold, foretaste of the
winter which was coming, which would hold the exposed land in its
grip for months. Five pounds would buy things which would make the
winter more tolerable; small comforts and luxuries meant a great deal
to real poverty in cold weather and feeble health. Of course to Johnny
and Julia too; they were all going to benefit. Captain Polkington
packed the bulb in a small box and posted it when he went to Halgrave
to have his hair cut.
By return he received a five pound note--a convenient handy form of
money, easy to send, easy to change. Halgrave might not perhaps be
able to give change for it without inconvenience, but Julia could get
it changed next time she went into town. That would not be just yet,
but a note will keep; it would perhaps be better to keep it for the
present. The Captain folded it in his pocket-book and kept it.