THE HOME OF THE NIGHTINGALES
Mudd, with the ten-pound note and the written address, had started that
morning with the intention of doing another errand as well. He first
took a cab to King Charles Street. It was a relief to find it there, and
that the house had not been burned down in the night. Fire was one of
Mudd's haunting dreads--fire and the fear of a mistress. He had
extinguishing-bombs hung in every passage, besides red, cone-shaped
extinguishers. If he could have had bombs to put out the flames of love
and keep women away he no doubt would have had them.
Mrs. Jukes received him, and he enquired if the plate had been locked
up. Then he visited his own room and examined his bank-book to see if it
were safe and untampered with; then he had a glass of ginger wine for
his stomach's sake.
"Where are you off to now?" asked Mrs. Jukes.
"On business for the master," replied Mudd. "I've some law papers to
take to an address. Lord! look at those brasses! Haven't the girls no
hands? Place going to rack and ruin if I leave it two instant minits.
And look at that fender--sure you put the chain on the hall door last
night?"
"Sure."
"Well, be sure you do it, for there's another Jack-the-Ripper chap goin'
about the West End, I've heard, and he may be in on you if you don't."
Having frightened Mrs. Jukes into the sense of the necessity for chains
as well as bolts, Mudd put on his hat, blew his nose, and departed,
banging the door behind him and making sure it was shut.
There is a flower shop in the street at the end of King Charles Street.
He entered, bought his bouquet, and with it in his hand left the
establishment. He was looking for a cab to hide himself in; he found
none, but he met a fellow butler, Judge Ponsonby's man.
"Hello, Mr. Mudd," said the other; "going courting?"
"Mrs. Jukes asked me to take them to a female friend that's goin' to be
married," said Mudd.
The bouquet was not extraordinarily large, but it seemed to grow
larger.
Condemned to take an omnibus in lieu of a cab, it seemed to fill the
omnibus; people looked at it and then at Mudd. It seemed to him that he
was condemned to carry Simon's folly bare in the face of the world. Then
he remembered what he had said about the recipient going to be married.
Was that an omen?
Mudd believed in omens. If his elbow itched--and it had itched
yesterday--he was going to sleep in a strange bed; he never killed
spiders, and he tested "strangers" in the tea-cup to see if they were
male or female.
The omen was riding him now, and he got out of the omnibus and sought
the street of his destination, feeling almost as though he were a
fantastic bridesmaid at some nightmare wedding, with Simon in the rôle
of groom.
That Simon should select a wife in this gloomy street off Leicester
Square, and in this drab-looking house at whose door he was knocking,
did not occur to Mudd. What did occur to him was that some hussy living
in this house had put her spell on Simon and might select him for a
husband, marry him at a registrar office before his temporary youth had
departed, and come and reign at Charles Street.
Mudd's dreaded imaginary mistress had always figured in his mind's eye
as a stout lady--eminently a lady--who would interfere with his ideas of
how the brasses ought to be polished, interfere with tradesmen, order
Mudd about, and make herself generally a nuisance; this new imaginary
horror was a "painted slut," who would bring ridicule and disgrace on
Simon and all belonging to him.
Mudd had the fine feelings of an old maid on matters like this, backed
by a fine knowledge of what elderly men are capable of in the way of
folly with women.
Did not Mr. Justice Thurlow marry his cook?
He rang at the dingy hall door and it was opened by a dingy little girl
in a print dress.
"Does Miss Rosinol live here?" asked Mudd.
"Yus."
"Can I see her?"
"Wait a minit," said the dingy one. She clattered up the stairs; she
seemed to wear hobnailed boots to judge by the noise. A minute elapsed,
and then she clattered down again.
"Come in, plaaze," said the little girl.
Mudd obeyed and followed upstairs, holding on to the shaky banister with
his left hand, carrying the bouquet in his right, feeling as though he
were a vicious man walking upstairs in a dream; feeling no longer like
Mudd.
The little girl opened a door, and there was the "painted hussy"--old
Madame Rossignol sitting at a table with books spread open before her
and writing.
She translated--as before said--English books into French, novels
mostly.
The bouquet of last night had been broken up; there were flowers in
vases and about the room; despite its shabbiness, there was an
atmosphere of cleanliness and high decency that soothed the stricken
soul of Mudd.
"I'm Mr. Pettigrew's man," said Mudd, "and he asked me to bring you
these flowers."
"Ah, Monsieur Seemon Pattigrew," cried the old lady, her face lighting.
"Come in, monsieur. Cerise!--Cerise!--a gentilmon from Mr. Pattigrew.
Will you not take a seat, monsieur?"
Mudd, handing over the flowers, sat down, and at that moment in came
Cerise from the bedroom adjoining. Cerise, fresh and dainty, with wide
blue eyes that took in Mudd and the flowers, that seemed to take in at
the same time the whole of spring and summer.
"Poor, but decent," said Mudd to himself.
"Monsieur," said the old lady, as Cerise ran off to get a bowl to put
the flowers in, "you are as welcome to us as your good kind master who
saved my daughter yesterday. Will you convey to him our deepest respects
and our thanks?"
"Saved her?" said Mudd.
Madame explained. Cerise, arranging the flowers, joined in; they waxed
enthusiastic. Never had Mudd been so chattered to before. He saw the
whole business and guessed how the land lay now. He felt deeply
relieved. Madame inspired him with instinctive confidence; Cerise in her
youth and innocence repelled any idea of marriage between herself and
Simon. But they'd got to be warned, somehow, that Simon was off the
spot. He began the warning seated there before the women and rubbing his
knees gently, his eyes wandering about as though seeking inspiration
from the furniture.
Mr. Pettigrew was a very good master, but he had to be took care of; his
health wasn't what it might be. He was older than he looked, but lately
he had had an illness that had made him suddenly grow young again, as
you might say; the doctors could not make it out, but he was just like a
child sometimes, as you might say.
"I said it," cut in Madame. "A boy--that is his charm."
Well, Mudd did not know anything about charms, but he was often very
anxious about Mr. Pettigrew. Then, little by little, the confidence the
women inspired opened his flood-gates and his suppressed emotions came
out.
London was not good for Mr. Pettigrew's health--that was the truth; he
ought to be got away quiet and out of excitement--doorknockers rose up
before him as he said this--but he was very self-willed. It was strange
a gentleman getting young again like this, and a great perplexity and
trouble to an old man like him, Mudd.
"Ah, monsieur, he has been always young," said Madame; "that heart could
never grow old."
Mudd shook his head.
"I've known him for forty year," said he, "and it has hit me cruel hard,
his doing things he's never done before--not much; but there you
are--he's different."
"I have known an old gentleman," said Madame--"Monsieur de Mirabole--he,
too, changed to be quite gay and young, as though spring had come to
him. He wrote me verses," laughed Madame. "Me, an old woman! I humoured
him, did I not, Cerise? But I never read his verses; I could not humour
him to that point."
"What happened to him?" asked Mudd gloomily.
"Oh dear, he fell in love with Cerise," said Madame. "He was very rich;
he wanted to marry Cerise, did he not, Cerise?"
"Oui, maman," replied Cerise, finishing the flowers.
All this hit Mudd pleasantly. Sincere as sunshine, patently, obviously,
truthful, this pair of females were beyond suspicion on the charge of
setting nets for Simon. Also, and for the first time in his life, he
came to know the comfort of a female mind when in trouble. His troubles
up to this had been mostly about uncleaned brasses, corked wine, letters
forgotten to be posted. In this whirlpool of amazement, like Poe's man
in the descent of the maelstrom, who, clinging to a barrel, found that
he was being sucked down slower, Mudd, clinging now to the female
saving-something--sense, clarity of outlook, goodness, call it what you
will--found comfort.
He had opened his mind, the nightmare had lifted somewhat. Opening his
mind to Bobby had not relieved him in the least; on the contrary,
talking with Bobby, the situation had seemed more insane than ever. The
two rigid masculine minds had followed one another, incapable of mutual
help; the buoyant female
Something incapable of strict definition was now to Mudd as the
supporting barrel. He clutched at the idea of old Monsieur de Mirabole,
who had got young again without coming to much mischief; he felt that
Simon in falling upon these two females had fallen amongst pillows. He
told them of Simon's message, that he would call upon them later in the
day, and they laughed.
"He will be safe with us," said Madame; "we will not let him come to
'arm. Do not be alarmed, Monsieur Mudd, the bon Dieu will surely protect
an innocent so charming, so good--so much goodness may walk alone, even
amongst tigers, even amongst lions; it will come to no 'arm. We will see
that he returns to the Sharing Cross 'Otel--I will talk to 'im."
Mudd departed, relieved, so great is the power of goodness, even though
it shines in the persons of an impoverished old French lady and a girl
whose innocence is her only strength.
But his relief was not to be of long duration, for on entering the
hotel, as before said, he met Bobby. "He's gone," said Bobby; "given me
the slip; and he has two hundred-pound bank-notes with him, to say
nothing of the rest."
"Oh, Lord!" said Mudd.
"Can he have gone to see that girl? What's her address?"
"What girl?" asked Mudd.
"The girl you took the flowers to."
"I've just been," said Mudd. "No, he wasn't there. Wish he was; it's an
old lady."
"Old lady!"
"And her daughter. They're French folk, poor but honest, not a scrap of
harm in them." He explained the Rossignol affair.
"Well, there's nothing to be done but sit down and wait," said Bobby.
"It's easy to say that. Me, with my nerves near gone."
"I know; mine are nearly as bad. 'Pon my soul, it's just as if one had
lost a child. Mudd, we've got to get him out of London; we've got to do
it."
"Get him back first," said Mudd. "Get him back alive with all that money
in his pocket. He'll be murdered before night, that's my opinion, I know
London; or gaoled--and he'll give his right name."
"We'll tip the reporters if he is," said Bobby, "and keep it out of the
papers. I was run in once and I know the ropes. Cheer up, Mudd, and go
and have a whisky-and-soda; you want bucking up, and so do I."
"Bucking up!" said Mudd.