IN A PARLOUR
I
Lights in all the windows and in the street lamps as Mr. Wriford
regained the town. Night approaching--and he terrified of its
approach. Little chill was in the air, yet as he walked he trembled
and his teeth chattered. He was shaken and acutely distressed by
revulsion of the effort to cling on and achieve his purpose against
Mr. Pennyquick's domineering savagery. He was worse shaken and worse
distressed by mounting continuance of the panic at his plight that
had driven him to the interview. That plight and to what it might
lead had suddenly been revealed to him as he walked away after the
first rebuff. Now it utterly consumed him. He shrunk from the gaze
of passers-by. He avoided with more than the fear of an evil-doer
the police constables who here and there were to be seen. His urgent
desire was concealment, to be left alone, to be quiet. His fear was
to be apprehended, found destitute, questioned, interfered with.
Questioning: that was his terror; solitude: that was his want. He
wanted to hide. He wanted to hide from every sort of connection with
what in two different phases he had lived through, and in each come
only to misery. He told himself that if, in obedience to his bodily
desires--his hunger, his extreme physical wretchedness--he were
somehow to get in communication with London and enjoy the money and
the place that waited him there--that would be the very quick of
intolerable meeting with his old self again. Unthinkable that! If
his bodily desires--his faintness, his extreme exhaustion--overcame
him, there would be meeting the old life in guise of explanations, of
dependence again in infirmary or workhouse. No, he must somehow be
alone; he must somehow live where none should interfere with him and
where he might on the one hand be occupied and on the other be able
to sit aside from all who knew him or might bother him, and thus
pursue his quest: was there some secret of happiness in life that he
had missed? These bodily miseries would somehow, somewhere, be
accommodated or would kill him: this mental searching--ever?
There was upon him accumulation of wretchedness such as in all his
wretchedness of his accursed life he never had endured. At its worst
in the old days, the days of being one of the lucky ones, there had
shone like a lamp to one lost in darkness the belief that if he could
get out of it all he would end it all. Ah, God, God, he had escaped
it and was in worse condition for his escape! The belief had been
tested--the belief was gone. In the wild Puddlebox days he had
beaten off wretchedness with violence of his hands and of his body,
believing that it ever could thus be beaten. God, it had beaten him,
never again in that deluded spirit could be faced. In the infirmary
he had begun his wondering after something in life that he had
missed. Lo, here was he come out to find it, and Christ! it was not,
and Christ! he might not now so much as sit and rest and ponder it.
He felt himself hunted. He felt every eye turned upon him within
whose range he came; every hand tingling suddenly to clutch him and
stop him; every voice about to cry: "Here, you! You, I say! What
are you doing? Where do you live? Who are you?"
He felt himself staggering from his dreadful faintness and thereby
conspicuous. Thrice as he stumbled round any corners that he met he
found himself passing a constable who each time more closely stared.
He took another turning. It showed him again that same policeman at
the end of the street. He dared not turn back. That would be
flight, his disordered mind told him, and he be followed. He dared
not go on. There was a little shop against where he stood. Its
lighted window displayed an array of gas-brackets, a variety of glass
chimneys and globes for lamps and gas, some coils of lead piping, and
in either corner a wash-basin fitted with taps. There was inscribed
over this shop
HY. BICKERS, CERT. PLUMBER
and attached to a pendent gas bracket within the window was a card
with the announcement:
LODGER TAKEN
Mr. Wriford made a great effort to steady himself; steadied his
shaking hand to press down the latch; and to the very loud jangle of
an overhead bell entered the tiny shop that the door disclosed.
II
There was sound of conversation and the clatter of plates from a
brightly-lit inner parlour. Mr. Wriford heard a voice say: "I'll go,
Essie, dear," and there came out to him a nice-looking little old
woman, white-haired and silvery-hued, rather lined and worn, yet
radiating from her face a noticeable happiness, as though there was
some secret joy she had, who smiled at him in pleasant inquiry.
"I'm looking for a lodging," said Mr. Wriford.
At her entry she had left the parlour door open behind her, and at
Mr. Wriford's words there came to him through it a bright girlish
voice which said: "There, now! Jus' what I was saying! Isn't that
funny, though! Let's have a laugh!" and with it, as though Mr.
Wriford's statement had conveyed the jolliest joke in the world, the
merriest possible ring of laughter.
The woman smiled at Mr. Wriford; and there was in the laugh something
so infectious as to make him, despite his wretchedness, smile in
response. She went back to the door and closed it. "That's our
Essie," she said, speaking as though Mr. Wriford in common with
everybody else must know who Essie was. "She's such a bright one,
our Essie!" The secret happiness that seemed to lie behind her years
and behind the lines of her face shone strongly as she spoke. One
might guess that "Our Essie" was it. Then she answered Mr. Wriford's
statement. "Well, we've got a very nice bedroom," she told him.
"Would you like to see it?"
"I'm sure it's nice," said Mr. Wriford. His voice, that he had tried
to strengthen for this interview, for some ridiculous reason trembled
as he spoke. The reason lay somewhere in the woman's motherly face
and in her happy gleaming. He felt himself stupidly affected just as
he had been affected--recurrence of the sensation brought the scenes
before his eyes--by the last appeal to him of the oldest sea-captain
living, and by the kindly action of the woman in the coffee-shop who
had given him a piece of bread early that morning. "I'm sure it's
nice," he said again, repeating the words to correct the stupid break
in his voice. "Would you tell me the price?"
"Won't you sit down?" said the woman. "You do look that tired!"
He murmured some kind of thanks and dropped into a chair that stood
by the counter.
She looked at him very compassionately before she answered his
question. "Tiring work looking for lodgings," she said.
He nodded--very faint, very wretched, very vexed with himself at that
stupid swelling from his heart to his throat that forbade him speech.
"Would you be living in?" he was asked.
"I think I should be out all day."
"Jus' breakfast and supper? That's the usual, of course, isn't it?
And full Sundays. That would be twelve shillings."
Twelve shillings was to be his wage from Mr. Pennyquick. He could
not spend it all.
"I couldn't pay it," said Mr. Wriford and caught at the counter to
assist himself to rise.
"Well, I am sorry, I'm sure," said the woman, and she added: "Hadn't
you better rest a little?"
His difficulty in rising warned him that if he did get up he might be
unable to stand. "I will, just a moment," he told her, "if you don't
mind. It's very kind of you. I've had rather a long day."
She had said she was sorry, and she stood looking at him as though
she were genuinely grieved and more than a little disturbed in mind.
"How much could you pay?" she asked.
"I could pay ten."
"And when might you want to begin?"
"Now."
"Would it be for long?"
"I can't say. I don't think it would."
She said briskly, as though her obvious disturbance of mind had
dictated a sudden course, "Look here, jus' wait a minute, will you?"
and went into the parlour, closing the door behind her.
Murmur of voices.
"You know," she said, coming back to him, "if it was likely to be
regular perhaps we could arrange ten shillings. But not knowing, you
see, that's awkward. We like our lodger more to be one of us like.
We don't want the jus' come and go sort. That's how it stands, you
see. You couldn't say, I suppose?"
"It's very kind of you," said Mr. Wriford. "I'm afraid I can't.
I'll tell you. I'm engaged with Mr. Pennyquick at Tower House
School--"
"Oh, Mr. Pennyquick!"
"You know him, I expect?"
"Oh, I know Mr. Pennyquick," said the woman, and seemed to have some
meaning in her tone.
"Well, it's only for a week, or by the week. I can't say how long."
He was given no reply to this. It was as if mention of Mr.
Pennyquick's name placed him as very likely to be among the "come and
go sort." "I had better be going, I think," he said, and this time
got to his feet.
"Well, I am sorry," the woman said again. "I'm sure I'm very sorry,
and you know I can't say straight off where you'll get what you want
for ten shillings. There's places, of course. But you know you
don't look fit to go trudging round after them this time of night.
Hadn't you better go just for the night somewhere? There's Mrs.
Winter I think would take you for the night. She's at--"
Mr. Wriford went to the door. "You needn't trouble," he said weakly.
"It can't be by the night. I can only pay at the end of the week."
The woman gave a little sound of dismay. "But--do you mean no money
till then?"
He nodded. That was what he meant--and must face.
"But, dearie me, you won't find any will take you without deposit.
They're very suspicious here, you know."
"Well," said Mr. Wriford. "Well--" and with fingers as helpless as
his voice began to fumble at the latch.
"But where are you going?"
"This handle," he said. "It's rather stiff." He took his hand from
it as she came round the counter to him, then immediately caught at
it again and supported himself against it.
She saw the action and cried out in consternation. "Oh," she cried.
"Why, you can't hardly stand, and going off nowhere! Why, you jus'
can't. You'll have to stop."
He asked wearily: "Stop! How can I stop?"
"Why, ten shillings. That'll be all right. Our Essie, you know--"
He could say no more than "Thank you. Thank you."
"You'll come right along. We're just sitting down to supper. No,
I'll just tell them first."
He effected speech again as, with her last words, she went to the
parlour door. "But deposit," he said, and recalled the phrase she
had used. "Aren't you suspicious?"
"Why, that can't be helped," she smiled back at him. "Our Essie, you
know, she'd never forgive me if I sent you off like you are. Jus'
sit down."
He had scarcely taken a seat when she was back again and calling him
from the threshold of the open parlour door. "That's all right.
Come right along. You didn't give your name, did you?"
"Wriford," and he reached her where she stood smiling.
She turned within and announced him: "Well, here's our lodger.
That's Mr. Bickers."
A man of stature and of strength, once, this Hy. Bickers, Cert.
Plumber. Bent now and stooping, but with something very strong, very
confident in his face: lined and worn as his wife's, silvery as hers.
Slightly whiskered, of white, otherwise clean shaven. A smoking-cap
on his head. Little enough hair beneath it. In his face that same
suggestion of a very happy secret happiness. "Expect you're tired,"
said Mr. Bickers and gave a warm hand-clasp.
"And that's our Essie."
A very cool, vigorous young hand, this time, that grasped Mr.
Wriford's and shook it strongly. A slim, brown little thing, our
Essie, eighteen perhaps, very pretty, with extraordinarily bright
eyes; wearing a blue cotton dress with white spots.
"Pleased to meet you," said Essie.
III
Such a cheerful, jolly room, the parlour. Here was a round table set
out for supper, and Essie bustling in and out of what appeared to be
the kitchen, giving final touches and laying a fourth place. A great
number of framed texts all round the walls, with two or three
religious pictures, a highly coloured portrait of Queen Victoria and
another of General Booth. A bright little fire burning, with an
armchair of shining American cloth on each side of it, and a sofa and
chairs, similarly covered, all with antimacassars, set around the
room. A bookcase near the window, and near one armchair a little
table carrying an immense Bible with other Bibles and prayer-books
placed upon it. Some shells on the mantelpiece in front of an
immense, gilt-framed mirror, and with them a great number of cups and
saucers and vases all inscribed as "A present from" the place whence
they were purchased.
Mr. Wriford sat on the sofa, silent, better already from the warmth
and the fragrant savour from the kitchen; not less wretched though:
somehow more wretched, somehow overcome and utterly consumed with
that swelling feeling from his heart to his throat. Mr. Bickers sat
in one of the armchairs, silent. Mrs. Bickers in the kitchen.
Mrs. Bickers appears. "Now Essie, dear, I'll dish up. You jus' look
after the lodger, dear. I expect the lodger will like to wash his
hands. Hot water, dear, and there's his bundle."
Essie comes out of the kitchen with a steaming jug in one hand and a
candle in the other, puts down the candle to tuck Mr. Wriford's
parcel under her arm, and then takes it up again. "This way," says
Essie and leads the way through another door and up a flight of very
steep and very narrow stairs. "Aren't they steep, though?" says
Essie over her shoulder. "We don't half want a lift!"
The stairs give onto a passage with doors leading off from the right,
and the passage terminates in a door which Essie butts open with her
knee, and here is a bedroom. "This is the lodger's room," says
Essie, setting down the candle and then removing the jug from the
basin and pouring out the water. "Course it don't look much jus' at
present, not expecting you, you see. But I'll pop up after supper
an' put it to rights. Find your way down, can't you? I'll get you a
bit of soap out of my room to go on with." There is a second door to
the bedroom, and Essie goes through it and returns with soap.
"That's my room," says Essie. "I call this my dressing-room when we
haven't got a lodger, jus' like as if I was a duchess," and she gives
the bright laugh that Mr. Wriford had heard in the shop. "That's all
right then. Bring the candle. That mark on the wall there's where a
lodger left his candle burning all night. Oh, they're cautions, some
of our lodgers! Don't be long."
IV
Most savoury and most welcome soup opens the supper. After it a
shoulder of mutton, Essie doing all the helping and the carving and
the running about. She sits opposite Mr. Wriford. Her eyes--there
is something quite extraordinarily bright about her eyes as he
watches them. They are never still. They are for ever sparkling
from this object to that; and wherever momentarily they rest he sees
them sparkle anew and sees her soft lips twitch as though from where
her eyes alight a hundred merry fancies run sparkling to her mind.
Her eyes flicker over the dish of potatoes and rest there a moment,
and there they are sparkling, and her mouth twitching, as though she
is recalling comic passages in buying them or in cooking them, or
perhaps it is their very appearance, grotesquely fat and helpless,
heaped one upon the other, in which she sees something odd that
tickles her. Most extraordinarily bright eyes, and with them always
most funny little compressions of her lips, as if she is for ever
tickled onto the very brink of breaking into laughter.
This at last, indeed, she does. Presence of the new lodger seems to
throw a constraint about the table, and the meal is eaten almost to
the end of the mutton course in complete silence. Very startling,
therefore, when Essie suddenly drops her knife and fork with a
clatter and leans back in her chair, eyes all agleam. "Oh, dear me!"
cries Essie, as Mr. and Mrs. Bickers stare at her. "Oh, dear me!
I'm very sorry, but just munching like this, you know, all of us,
without speaking a word! Oh, dear!" and she uses the expression that
Mr. Wriford had heard when he first spoke to Mrs. Bickers. "Oh,
dear, let's have a laugh!"
Mrs. Bickers glances at Mr. Wriford and says reprovingly: "Oh,
Essie!" But there is no help for it and no avoiding its infection.
Essie puts back her head and goes into a ring of the brightest
possible laughter, and Mrs. Bickers laughs at her, and Mr. Bickers
laughs at her, and even Mr. Wriford smiles; and thereafter Essie
chatters without ceasing to her parents on an extraordinary variety
of topics connected with what she has done or seen during the day, in
every one of which she finds subject for amusement and many times
declares of whatever it may be: "Oh, aren't they funny, though!
Let's have a laugh!"
Mr. Wriford smiles when she laughs--impossible to avoid it.
Otherwise he contributes nothing to the chatter. This strange, this
kind and happy and generous ending to his day, acts upon him only in
increasing sensation of that upward swelling from his heart to his
throat that forbids him speech. He has the feeling that if he talks
his voice will break in tears--of weakness, of wretchedness: nay, of
worse than these--of their very apotheosis. There is happiness here.
There is here, among these three, that which he is seeking, seeking
and cannot find. They have found it: what is it then? It is all
about them--shining in their faces, singing in their words. He is
not of it. He is outside it. They are on the heights; he in the
depths, the depths! Let him not speak, let him not speak! If he
speaks he must sob and cry, get to his feet, while wondering they
look at him, and stare at them, and break from them and go. If he so
betrays himself he must cry at them: "What have you found? Why are
you happy? This kills me, kills me, to sit here and watch you.
Don't touch me. None of you touch me. Let me go. Just let me go."
They seem to see his plight. They smile encouragingly at him to draw
him into their talk; Mr. Bickers, when the women are clearing away,
offers him a new clay pipe and the tobacco jar. But they seem to
understand. They accept without comment or offence the negation of
these advances which he gives only by shaking his head as they are
made.
"Well, that's done!" says Essie, coming down from the lodger's room
after the supper has been cleared away. "Bed made and everything
nice and ready. One of the castors of the bed is shaky, Dad. You'll
have to see to it in the morning. I can't think how I never noticed
it till now. Oh, those lodgers! They're fair cautions!"
Mrs. Bickers smiles at Mr. Wriford. "Well, I expect you'd like to go
straight to bed, wouldn't you now?"
Painful this distrust of his voice. He rises and manages: "Yes, I
would."
"You'll be ever so much better in the morning after a good sleep.
What about--" and Mrs. Bickers looks at her husband.
"It's our custom," says Mr. Bickers in his deep voice, "all to read a
piece from the Bible before we go to bed--all that sleep under this
roof. We'll do it now so you can get along. Essie, dear."
Essie puts chairs to the table, and then Bibles. The immense Bible
for Mr. Bickers, one but a little smaller for Mrs. Bickers, and one
for herself. "There's my Church-service for you," says Essie to Mr.
Wriford. All the Bibles have a ribbon depending from them whereat
they are opened, and Essie finds the place for Mr. Wriford.
"Twenty-fourth Psalm," says Essie. "My fav'rit. Isn't it a short
one, though!"
"We read in turn," says Mr. Bickers. He has one hand on the great
Bible and stretches the other to Mrs. Bickers, who takes it and holds
it. Mr. Wriford sits opposite them, then Essie, next her father on
his other side and snuggling against him, and they begin.
Mr. Bickers, very deep and slow and reverent:
"_The earth is the Lord's and all that therein is: the compass of the
world and they that dwell therein._"
Mrs. Bickers, very gently:
"_For he hath founded it upon the seas, and prepared it upon the
floods._"
Mr. Wriford. He is trembling, trembling, trembling. They are
waiting for him. They are looking at him. Round swings the room,
around and around. Who is waiting? Who is looking? Others are
here. He hears the oldest sea-captain living, plainly as if he stood
before him in the room: "Matey! Matey!" He sees Mr. Puddlebox,
plainly as if he were here beside him. "Wedge in, boy; wedge in!"
They are surely here. They are surely calling him. He is on the
rock with the sea about him. He is in the little room with the
figure on the bed. Darkness, darkness. Is this Puddlebox? Is this
Captain? Is he by the sea? Is he by the bed? Round swings the
darkness, around and around. He is not! He is here! He is here
where happiness is. They are waiting for him. They are watching
him. Wriford! Wriford! He tries to read the words that swim before
his eyes. He must. They are very few. They are a question. He
must! Trembling he gives voice:
"_Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord: or who shall rise up in
his holy place?_"
Essie, strong and clear and eager, emphasising the first word as
though strongly and directly she answered him:
"_Even he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart: and that hath not
lift up his mind unto vanity, nor sworn to deceive his neighbour._"
Mr. Bickers, as one that feels the words he reads, and is sure of
them:
"_He shall receive the blessing from the Lord: and righteousness from
the God of his salvation._"
Mrs. Bickers in gentle confirmation:
"_This is the generation of them that seek him: even of them that
seek thy face, O Jacob._"
His turn again. He cannot! Let him get out of this! Let him away!
This is not to be borne. Unendurable this. What are they reading?
Why have they chosen these words. "Who shall ascend?" They know his
misery, then! They know the depths that he is in! Hateful that they
should know it, hateful, insufferable, horrible. They see his state
and have chosen words that mean his state. He is exposed before
them. Let him away! Let him get out of this! They shall not know!
His turn. He cannot, cannot. They are watching. They are waiting.
Do they see how his face is working? Do they see how he twists and
twists his hands? His turn. Ah, ah, he is in the depths, the
depths! He is physically, actually down, down--struggling, gasping,
suffocating. All this room and these about him stand as it were
above him--watching him, waiting for him, knowing his misery. He is
sinking, sinking. He is in black and whirling darkness. There is
shouting in his ears. Let him away! Let him go!
Some one says: "Essie, dear."
Essie--strong and loud and clear, with tremendous emphasis upon the
first word as though her strong young voice performed its meaning:
"_Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting
doors: and the King of glory shall come in._"
He gets to his feet, overturning his chair. He stumbles away, with
blind eyes, with groping hands.
"Not that door!" cries Essie and runs to him. "Here's the door.
Here's the stairs. Look, here's your candle."
He blunders up. He blunders to his room. He extinguishes the
candle. Let him have the dark, the dark! He throws off his clothes,
tearing them from him as though they were his agonies. God, if he
could but tear these tortures so! He flings himself upon the bed and
trembles there and clutches there and thrusts the sheet between his
teeth to stay him crying aloud. Inchoate thoughts that rend him,
rend him! Unmeaning cries that with the sheet he stifles. What,
what consumes him now? He cannot name it. What tortures him? He
does not know. Writhe, writhe in the bed; and now it is the sea, and
now the Infirmary ward, and now the coffee-shop, and now the parlour.
Ah, beat down, beat down these torments! Ah, sit up and stare into
the darkness and rid the spirit, rid the mind, of all these shapes
and scenes that press about the pillow. Has he slept? Is he
sleeping? Why suffers he? What racks him? In God's name what? In
pity, in pity what?
"_Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting
doors: and the King of glory shall come in._"
Ah, ah!