"He makes three times what he would at any trade." Sibyl speaks positively; she always knows things.
"But he's putting it all by for the child." The clergyman justifies Jim, promptly.
"Please go on with what you were saying, Mr. Taylor!" Judith speaks. "'Although he makes a good deal by what is really begging in disguise'...."
"He might be dissuaded from it even if the loss of his foot—poor fellow!—should make it more lucrative."
"I don't see how." This is Sibyl, naturally. The Rector makes a mental note that she is always in opposition. Her sister says nothing, and he resumes:
"You remember the story of the asker?" Sibyl remembers it with a snap, and "Of course!—go on!" Judith, more slowly, thinks she remembers, and then—oh yes!—she remembers now. The speaker continues: "You know the child isn't seven, and doesn't the least realize about her father. She has been indoctrinated from babyhood with a false idea of some employment he has; he's as professional to her as the turncock or lamplighter. But he—poor chap!—is most anxious she should never know the truth. Yesterday he consented to not seeing the child for another six weeks—although he's longing for her, day and night—because he wants to spare her the knowledge of his stump. He's convinced that a wooden leg will be a great joke between them, and is devising shifts by which it may be concealed from his 'little lass,' as he calls her, that it is ever taken off. And yesterday, after swearing me, as it were, into the conspiracy for the child's deception, he ended up with an earnest request that I would never 'let on' about his being a 'cadging varmint.' I pointed out to him the utter uselessness of the attempt, and that it must fail in the end, and that the longer the knowledge is put off, the more painful it will be when it comes. I suspect he would give it up, to spare her. But he would have to be provided for, somehow."
"Have to be!" Sibyl's tone suggests impatient protest against Jim's case being made a claim on Society. The whole duty of a Christian includes a liberal amount of slumming; but it must be distinctly understood to be Christianity, not bald equity. Athelstan Taylor didn't feel analytical on the subject. He knew he would have "had to" cross the road between Jerusalem and Jericho if he had happened to come up before the Samaritan, or else that he would have been miserable all night about the man that had fallen among thieves and come to grief. He was like that at school, you see. Such an awfully good-natured chap! Probably Samaria was an awfully good-natured place. Anyhow, he didn't see his way to discussing the point this morning. He made a concession:
"Well—suppose we say it would be a pleasure to do it! You would feel it so if you knew the child. Really that infant's pluck when that poor madman was flourishing that horrible knife about...."
"But you didn't tell us about that." Both ladies speak. Indeed, Mr. Taylor had slurred over a great deal of his adventure, merely saying he was passing the house and had given what assistance he could, with very little detail till he got to Uncle Bob's escape.
"I never saw such a courageous child in my life. Addie Fossett's got her at the Schoolhouse now. She got a bad chill that night, and we've been very uneasy about her. Perhaps we are both of us given to fidgeting about coughs and temperatures and things. However!" This isolated word expresses, as briefly as possible, dismissal of the subject as material for depression, with retention of it as stimulus to action.
Judith is only languidly interested. "What do you think of doing, Mr. Taylor?" she says absently. Her mind is on the playhouse, yesterday.
"I'm not very clear about details, but if Jim will be tractable, and do as he's told, there ought to be some arrangement possible. He admits that he has some money in the savings-bank, and the Carriers' Co. that ran over him ... yes!—I've seen the manager ... are inclined to be liberal in the matter of compensation; and then there's...." Here a hesitation comes in.
"There's papa, of course." Both ladies agree about their parent, as a sort of fons et origo nummorum. Mr. Taylor had better talk to him about it. Mr. Elphinstone, after thirty-five years in the family, has no scruple about showing that he overhears conversation, and subinforms Miss Arkroyd that Sir Murgatroyd is imminent. Pending the baronet, the conversation is general, then drifts towards the Great Idea. Sibyl becomes gracious—points with pride to a mountain of letters on the subject that she will have to answer before she goes out. Mr. Elphinstone has restricted them to a clear spot on the breakfast-table, without presuming to fold or envelope. Miss Arkroyd detracts from their glory. Most of them are from artists who want to make designs for the cripples to execute, or from cripples who can do nothing at present, but would take three-and-sixpence a week during apprenticeship. Sibyl is indignant. The letters are the exact contrary of what Judith alleges. It is easy to sneer, but read what Mr. Brewdover says. There's his letter! But Judith says she isn't prepared to take up her parable on the subject—doesn't know enough about the matter. No doubt it's all right! She withdraws an incipient yawn, and Sibyl says something sotto voce, possibly that Judith might just as well have held her tongue.
Athelstan Taylor, writing of this interview to his friend Gus later, said: "I was glad at this point that the Bart. came in, apologetic—as I didn't fancy having to make peace between those two girls. Why need well-brought-up young women to be so quarrelsome—without the excuse of Alcoholism? They are rather a disappointment—those two—they used to be so nice as kids. I must say the old boy is my favourite of the family still—he was quite exemplary about this poor sailor chap—said, if I was convinced, that was enough for him, and I had only to say how much would be wanted. Her ladyship was very good too—do her justice!—promised to come and see poor Jim at the Hospital; and I think will keep her promise." He added a postscript next day: "Lady Arkroyd's visit came off this morning, and passed off without ructions. I was rather nervous, because her ladyship thinks it her duty to get up a sort of theologico-ethico-moral-goody steam because I'm there—and poor Jim is such a terrible and appalling example of theoretical irreligion that I was on tenterhooks."
CHAPTER XVII
LADY ARKROYD'S VISIT TO JIM. GOODY TALK. JIM AND HIS MAKER. HOW MR. TAYLOR VISITED ANOTHER CASE. A DEATH-BED CONFESSION
The reference to Jim's irreligious attitude, in the Rector's letter, makes it almost incumbent on the story to give some particulars of Lady Arkroyd's visit to the Hospital.
Athelstan Taylor, of course, came to his appointment to the minute. He always preferred to do the waiting himself if he could spare the time, and he usually found something to avert tedium. On this occasion, seeing no sign, when he arrived at St. Brides, of the Arkroyd pair of bays, or the dark chestnuts with starred foreheads—both well known to him—he made short excursions into the neighbourhood, hoping each time to just catch Lady Arkroyd on her arrival when he returned.
He made three such excursions, amounting in all to half an hour. The first and longest was made so by his lighting on a fight between two small boys, which he felt bound to interrupt. But not at the very earliest; it was such a good fight, and the two pugilists and their friends were enjoying it so. So he spun out his approach as much as possible, and then pounced with, "Why aren't you two at school, hey?" They looked at each other, and at him, as their friends did also, but could not agree on a reason. Then they said, "Let's go down the lyne," and fled, carrying jackets, to begin again as soon as possible. Pursuit down the lane did not seem to come into practical politics.
The second excursion was shorter, and he was sorry he could not spare time for more conversation with a purveyor of tortoises, who was offering them to the public from a truck. Why should the trade in tortoises flourish in South London? Why tortoises at all? He could not stop to learn; and when he found that her ladyship was still in arrear, he started back to find the tortoise-monger, but failed to do so. On his return this time, he thought it best to step into the Hospital and get a few words with his friend the House Surgeon, to whom he had sent a card overnight. It was all right, said that gentleman, about the dressers. They had nearly done by now, and Jim's case had been made a point of—was quite ready for visitors; nothing doing now till the visiting surgeon came—in an hour and a half about. Mr. Taylor, reassured, went out again to meet her ladyship, and presently saw the carriage coming down the street. In a very short time he was telling Jim he had brought a lady to see him.
"It's mighty kind of you, master. And it's mighty kind o' the lady. I'm not so fit to see company as I might be." He did not mean he could not see; for he always forgot his blindness. He referred entirely to his uncourtly entourage.
"We mustn't trouble about that," said her ladyship, and really didn't mean to be condescending. "I shall sit here, Mr. Taylor. Where will you come?" Here being the chair beside the bed. Mr. Taylor wouldn't sit down; indeed, it was easier to stand, as long as Jim kept his hand, which he did not seem inclined to let go.
"Tell this lady about your accident, Jim."
"Oh, do, please! I should so like to hear." This was true, and opened up an avenue of respite to a feeling of her ladyship's that she ought to say something good, if it was only about how we should bow to the will of an All-wise Providence. She had got that ready in the carriage coming through Old Bond Street, and had felt quite sure she should think of something better presently, and hadn't succeeded. So she was glad of a pause, to think in. Besides, it was interesting.
"There's none so much to tell about it, lady; you might put it all inside of a minute, in the manner o' speaking. Ye see, I never see this van coming along—never took note, I should say!—more by token I was listening like to hear the voice of my little lass call 'Pilot'—a kind of divarsion we make out between us, me and the lassie ... you'll understand?..."
"I quite understand. Your little lass is the child I have seen at Miss Fossett's Schoolroom. Little Eliza Ann."
"Belike you have, lady. She's Lizarann, sure! Well, this here van come along in the dark, and there was I mazed like, by reason of not finding the granite curb. It come with a nasty rush, and I had no way on me to steer clear, set apart the want of sea-room. But I'm a bit uncertain how it come about, there's the truth of it!" Jim paused, and felt for an expression, probably one akin to loss of presence of mind; then ended with, "In a quick turn about o' things, you don't easy come by the time to get your considerin' cap on. But it was no fault of any man, as I see it."
Lady Arkroyd saw an opportunity. "It was the will of Providence," she said. There could be no harm in that, although her clerical friend had cautioned her that Jim's mind was not an easy one to deal with on religious lines. But Jews, Turks, Heretics, and Infidels innumerable could have subscribed to this, surely. Jim only said, with the most perfect simplicity: "I wouldn't wish to fix the blame, with any confidence. It was just a chance, as I see it." Her ladyship did not catch the exact tenor of the remark, and did not see the amused, benevolent smile on the face of the big man who still stood looking down on Jim, holding his hand as he would have held a child's.
The fact was that, on one of the two or three occasions when the Rev. Athelstan had referred—but quite colloquially, and without any idea of taking a mean advantage of Jim's helplessness—to the Almighty as the responsible agent in the matter, Jim had taken up the theological position that if God hadn't "cut in," he—Jim—might have been still the strong seaman on the great free sea, might have actually seen his little lass! Dolly must have died, of course—"my wife, seven year agone, master," said Jim. "Because a many on us may die, any time"—but that was another matter. At least, why need both his eyes go? "Ah, master!" said he, when it was settled that if God had done one job, he'd done the other, "why couldn't he leave me just no more than a quarter-allowance of one of them—just for to see my wife and the little lass together, what time there was for it?" Perhaps it was part of the Rector of Royd's unsoundness that he almost lost sight of Jim's anthropomorphism—the naïveté of his presentment of his Maker as a meddlesome old plague—in the heartbroken voice that could still speak about the eyes that could no longer see, about the child his touch and hearing alone could tell him of. Part of that unsoundness, too, maybe, that he resolved thenceforward to make no attempt to change Jim's views, except by hypnotic suggestions, or their equivalent! No crop could grow on land so foully manured! Better to leave it to the wild-flowers for a season.
He certainly thought he saw an improvement of Jim's feelings towards this strange deity of his conception, in this readiness to exonerate him, or it, and to lay the blame on the metaphysico-religious scapegoat, Chance. It was manifested in the tone of his voice, one of willingness to spare even an author of mischief—maybe a well-intentioned blunderer—and to find an insensitive back to flagellate in his place.
"The merest chance, I am sure!" Lady Arkroyd welcomed the scapegoat, and the Rev. Athelstan looked more amused than ever, under the skin. The lady never suspected herself of any absurdity. "But Sir Murgatroyd says the matter ought to be gone into, and proper inquiries made." The Baronet had done so, certainly; but may be said to have been left speaking, like M.P.'s when a reporter packs off an instalment of shorthand in mediis rebus. "Of course, if there was any doubt about the driver of the van being sober at the time...."
Jim showed anxiety on the carman's behalf. "He mightn't be any the worse driver for that, lady," he said. "It was the sart o' night a pint or so don't go far on, to keep the life in a man."
"Jim won't grudge him that much, on such a night, Lady Arkroyd. But Sir Murgatroyd's quite right, of course! However, as a matter of fact, the whole thing has been thoroughly sifted, and it seems certain drink had nothing to do with it, this time."
"Not likely, master! Didn't the pore feller make a shift to get over here a'ter work hours—took a night-turn all the way from Camden Road goods station—so they told me—just for to hear the end of the story? And the follerin' night? So they said, and I'm tellin' ye all I know. In coorse, I never seen him, myself!"
"No—of course you could not." Lady Arkroyd's pity for Jim's blindness, which his speech ignored, is mistaken by him for regret at the stringency of visiting regulations. The feeling of compassion in her voice seems to him only man's natural resentment against rules, interpreted by womanly sensibility.
"I'll see him one o' these days, lady," Jim says consolatorily. Of course, he means in the days of the wooden leg to come, if not sooner. Her ladyship, still conscious of the desirability of a religious atmosphere, has some vague impression that Mr. Taylor has been guaranteeing Jim eyesight on a cloud, through the whole of an exasperating Sunday lasting for ever; and she makes up her mind Jim could be read to out of the Bible with advantage, and of course there were any number of people ready to do this sort of thing. She will inquire about that. But Jim had really wanted to change the conversation to a subject nearer his heart.
"My little lass, lady!" he said. "You seen the lass once, round to the Schoolhouse. Happen you might see her again?"
"If I see Miss Fossett, Coupland, I shall certainly ask her to point out your little girl. She may not be there, you know."
"That's so, lady. But supposin'! Any guess thing you might speak about, ye know. So I was just thinkin', if you was to be so very kind as to bear in mind...."
"Yes. Indeed I will, Coupland. Is there something you wish I should say?"
"Well, lady, yes! And be very thankful to ye! Would ye be so very kind as just say to her ... from her Daddy, ye know ... nothing at all about any sort of an ill-convenience come of this here accident. Just make it easy, like ... for she's but young, ye'll understand...."
"Jim means ... I know, Jim"—for Jim seemed about to interrupt the Rev. Athelstan—"he means he wants Lizarann to think the accident a slight one."
"Right you are, master!" Jim is much relieved, and his interpreter continues: "So he wants her to know as little as possible till he can walk about and make the least of it."
"Oh yes! I quite understand that. I'll be very careful and discreet."
"Not for to let on, anyways, about her Daddy being a fut the less!" Jim's relief is enormous at the completeness of the understanding.
The conversation ran on, on such general lines as the diet of hospital life—highly approved of—the sanguineness of the head-surgeon that Jim would make a record in recovery, and the peculiarly small amount of inconvenience endured (if the truth were known) by the wearers of wooden legs. Jim was very cheerful about this. "Bob Steptoe, he'll lose a good half o' my custom," said he, immensely amused.
At this moment an interruption occurred. A nurse who had passed through the room a few minutes before rather hurriedly was returning, with a slightly perplexed manner on her, as of one who had not found a thing sought for. At the same moment another, who seemed a superior functionary, came in from the opposite door, and they met and spoke together in an undertone. Both looked round towards Jim's bed.
"I can ask him, anyhow!" said the senior nurse, and approached Athelstan Taylor. She spoke to him rapidly under her breath, but of what she said neither Jim nor the lady heard anything. When she had finished, he said, "Of course, certainly!" and then, turning to Lady Arkroyd, explained that a man who was dying in another part of the Hospital had asked to see a clergyman, and that an unusual conjunction of circumstances had made it difficult to comply with his request, which was urgent. He might die any moment, the nurse had said, and Mr. * * * was ill—he being, presumably, the usual resource in such cases. Mr. Taylor was sure Lady Arkroyd would excuse him. But it would be better for him to say good-bye provisionally, as no one could tell how long he might be detained. Her ladyship would no doubt stay and talk with Jim a little longer.
Lady Arkroyd was not sorry to do so. She had not quite come up to her own standard of self-justification; having, indeed, a well-marked conviction of her capability of doing anything she turned her hands to, and certainly not least of affording consolation and help to the distressed. Without cataloguing the instances, she had an inner conviction of the existence of a class of persons who were sick, and she visited them. She was a good-natured woman enough, and really took sufficient pleasure in doing good on purpose, to make playing at Providence a luxury, or at least to prevent its ever becoming a bore. No wonder that on this occasion she felt a little damped, with nothing further to her score so far than an undertaking on her part to hold her tongue and be discreet, under specified circumstances.
"The master's coming back—the gentleman?" says Jim, as the door closes on Mr. Taylor and the nurse.
"Oh yes!—he'll come back to see you before he goes." Jim has to be satisfied with this. "You must try to keep quiet and be patient, Coupland, and then the healing will go on quicker...."
"It ain't hardly impatience, lady." Jim pauses to think what it is. "Not so much as the want of a good stretch. I'd be all right if they'd take this here plaister off o' my right leg. It's a mighty thick plaister, anyhow." Jim's slight movement is terribly expressive of the irksomeness of his lot. The nurse in charge notes the fact, and contrives such alleviation as may be—an alteration in the angle of the couch, an adjustment of a pillow, a dose of some refreshing stimulant that seems not unwelcome. "He's not the trouble many are," says she. Jim seems a favourite.
Lady Arkroyd, left to herself, casts about for something to say which shall neither be aggressively religious nor too cowardly a concession to Jim's heathenism, of which Mr. Taylor has spoken freely to her. After a few more words about collateral matter, especially about the Hospital's veto on smoking—a bitter privation—she thinks she sees her way.
"It is very hard, Coupland, and one can't help saying so. Only, of course, it doesn't do to call the Wisdom of Providence in question...."
"What might that be, missis—lady, I should say?" Now the fact is, Jim was not inquiring about the Wisdom of Providence—of which he had heard before from Mr. Wilkins—but about the meaning of "calling in question." The lady thought otherwise, mistakenly.
"I only meant," she said, feeling very unsafe, "that we know—at least, we believe—that events are Divinely ordered for the best."
"Ye know better than I do about that, lady," said Jim. And then Lady Arkroyd thought he was an Agnostic. He had really only paid tribute to her superior education. But it seemed to set him a-thinking, too! For he added, after a pause: "If they'd a' been ordered for the worst, maybe I might have had my barker-pipe." The word "Divinely" had not carried his mind outside the Hospital regulations. Poor Jim had not the remotest conception that he had shocked his lady visitor.
Nevertheless, she was shocked, and felt the case called for an effort. But her own religious convictions—only she had been quite properly educated, mind you!—were few and vapid. Her proprietorship of a Prayer-Book, with a mark in the right place, nearly covered the whole ground. However, there was always the Rev. Athelstan; she could make him responsible, by indirect engineering, for any amount of belief, whatever her own unprofessional laxity might be. So she assumed a definitely religious air, and ignored Jim's unfortunate remark about the pipe.
"I feel so sure, Coupland, that Mr. Taylor has told you, and will tell you more, about Where to look, in tribulation for...."
"Sakes alive, Lady! Me look!..." Jim, who had interrupted, stopped suddenly, confused and perturbed at something. Her ladyship, interpreting this as some protest of Agnosticism, now felt her insufficiency to deal with the case, and only wished to transfer the conversation elsewhere. She felt she had done her duty, in what she would not have hesitated to mention in Society as "goody talk," when she executed that superb entrechat, so to speak, of the big initial W of "Where." She had done her duty, and had not succeeded. She would be quite justified now in relaxing from the exalted serenity, tempered with due humility, of a spiritual instructress, and referring to the minor consolations of this earth. She ignored Jim's exclamation, and continued speaking as though her last sentence had been completed.
"Besides, in a very little while you will be able to have Eliza Ann back again, and really you'll be able to move about quite easily."
Jim laughed out—a big hearty laugh of contempt for any mere personal mishap of his own. "I'll have the less weight to carry, sure!" he said. And then her ladyship looked at her watch, and asked the nurse whether that clock was right; who promptly replied that that clock was, if anything, slow. Seeing the good effect of which, she went on to say that it was slower still. However, this was not needed, for the visitor was only feeling about for departure, which, in view of the possible indefinite postponement of Mr. Taylor's return, was given up with insincere professions of regret on the part of both, and Lady Arkroyd took her leave, consolable, but with a noble sense of duty done.
"The master be coming back, though, missis...?" Jim asks anxiously of the nurse.
"Oh, yes, he's bound to come back, and you may make your mind easy."
When Athelstan Taylor and the nurse left the ward, they passed through the avenue of beds in the adjoining ward without speaking, and into a lobby beyond. Then the nurse stopped and spoke. "This is a bad ward that we are going to. Perhaps I ought to have told you?"
"You are going there yourself?"
"It is my duty to go."
"And mine." They said no more, but no more was necessary. It was a little way further that they had to go, through wards and passages; but the circumstances did not seem to favour chat. Arriving at the door of the ward, Mr. Taylor turned and said: "This is a man, is it not—this patient—I think you said?"
"A man. The case developed in the hospital. He was brought in as sudden paralysis. He has been here a month or more."
"Do they keep cases of this sort so long?"
"Not always. They kept this one. He had an epileptic seizure which was followed by torpor. Dr. —— thinks now that the disease has affected the valves of the heart. He might die suddenly, at any moment. When I told him so to-day, he asked to see the Chaplain, Mr. ——. He and all his family have mumps."
A young doctor was in the ward, who said, "Is this the gentleman?" and after "Yes" from the nurse, continued: "You mustn't be alarmed at our precautions. We only take them in order to be on the safe side." The precautions which, it seemed, St. Bride insisted on for all who should enter a contagion-ward were a close overall of some germ-proof canvas or linen, and thin, invulnerable rubber gloves. Mr. Taylor, as he drew them on, shuddered to think how many a time, conceivably, they might have been some wearer's only safeguard against a blasted life, and the inheritance of a dire poison by generations yet unborn.
When he was safely attired in them, the young surgeon, as he conducted him through the ward, said in reply to a question: "Oh no!—not the slightest danger from the breath. You may be quite happy about that. Let Sister Martha put a little eau-de-Cologne on your handkerchief. This is your man."
This! This semi-mummy that is little else than bandages! This thing, at least, only manifested to us, otherwise, as an exposed mouth; or what was a mouth and is an orifice, to be identified by two carious, projecting teeth; or as the nailless fingers of an enclosed hand, escaping from its wraps. This, it seems, is the Rev. Athelstan Taylor's man, by whom he takes a chair the nurse brings him, as he thinks to himself: "My man, thank God, not Gus's!" For his invalid friend might easily have been here in his place, and could he—poor delicate fellow!—have borne the awful flavour of this place, breaking through all antiseptic spray and palliation of ozone, and making him, himself, as physically sick as he is sick at heart? "Not Gus's man, thank God! At least, a great overgrown giant like myself!" So he thought as he tried to catch the words of the wretched remnant on the bed beside him. They were audible only by him, as he stooped resolutely, brushing all caution aside, and placed his ear close to the dreadful mouth. It needed an effort, even with Sister Martha's benediction on his handkerchief.
"What is my name, and who am I?" He repeats the whispered words as he hears them. "I am Athelstan Taylor, a priest in holy orders.... Yes—a clergyman of the Church of England ... yes!—I understand what you say. You have something on your conscience which you wish to tell. Try and tell me."
The nurse evidently thinks the man is dying, and may die without receiving the Sacrament, which she has supposed his principal object. She makes a suggestion to that effect. But Mr. Taylor thinks otherwise. "Presently!" he says. "Let him tell his story first." The nurse retires, and the tale goes on.
It was a hard tale to catch the threads of. But its hearer was able to master the main points. The narrator had married, sixteen years before, a very young and inexperienced girl, unknown to her parents, who seemed to have remained in ignorance throughout. Even when he deserted her, a very short time after marriage, she kept her secret from everyone but a young clerk, a friend of his own, with whom, as a natural consequence, the poor girl, apparently afraid to divulge the facts to her family, became very liée. His story was obscure at this point, the only clear thing being that, in order to shake her off and remain free to contract another marriage, he had written a mock confession to this young man; alleging, on grounds which the dying man's condition prevented his explaining in full, that the wedding had been really a fraud, and his statement that it was so seemed to have been held sufficient by the girl. The friend, either convinced of its truth or in love with the girl himself, had accepted it, or seemed to accept it, as indisputable. Was it to be wondered at that, when she returned to her home after an absence of some months, with nothing to show that this concealed marriage had taken place, she had accepted this young man as her lover, and married him with the full consent of her parents? The narrator had clearly foreseen this, and looked to it as a practical release from an encumbrance. His own subsequent career had been one of profligacy and crime, some of his sins being, to all appearance, far worse than this one, as such things are estimated; one achievement having, in fact, procured him a long term of penal servitude. How strange it seemed that now, with the hand of Death upon him, he should feel the lighter offence an exceptional weight upon his conscience! Yet so it was! And his hearer thought he could detect the relief the confession had given him in the changed whisper that followed the completion of his story. Mr. Taylor was glad that the atrocity that sent him to Portland Island was not specially referred to in the culprit's final inquiry—could he hope for forgiveness?
"I told the unhappy creature," wrote Athelstan to Gus, in the letter he wrote that evening, "that his chances of forgiveness must depend on the truth or falsehood of his own contrition, and I am afraid I had the cruelty to say it with some severity. You know my severe manner. But, then, it was true. I'm afraid, Gus dear, that I have hardly your faith in the efficacy of my holy office, taken by itself. But these things are awful to face. I had hardly time to fulfil my function as a priest when the poor wretch breathed his last."
It was at that last moment that the need of the rubber gloves became manifest. Just at the end, the dreadful nailless hand, moving painfully about, and fraught with some sudden strength, had caught the healthy one that lay near it on the coverlid, and drew it up to touch it with the things that had once been lips. The young doctor seemed relieved when he had himself seen the priest in holy orders well drenched in water with strange suspicions of sanitation in it, after a heart-felt lather of carbolic soap.
When the Rev. Athelstan came back to Jim's bedside, his face no longer wore its cheerful aspect of an hour ago. In that short time his sad experience—surely something more than a mere death-bed, such as his daily routine of life brought him to the sight of so often!—had changed it, and made him almost like another man.
"I'm martal glad ye've come, master," said Jim. And, at the sound of a voice with a memory in it of the chant the windlass echoes when the anchor leaves its bed in the sand, and the last shore-boat waves God-speed to the ship set free, his hearer seemed to shake off some of the gloom that oppressed him. "I'm martal glad to see ye back," he repeats, "by token of the good lady."
Athelstan takes the hand that seeks his. "Why the good lady, Jim?" he says.
"Why, master, the good lady she says to me, she says, did I know where to look for soomat or other? Lard knows what! And I says to her, 'Me look!' I says, because I was thinking belike this drawback on my eyesight might have slipped out of memory...."
"Not very likely, Jim! But if it did, Lady Arkroyd's recollected it by now."
"Ye think so, master? But put it she hasn't! I'd be sorry she should come to the knowledge late in the day. These here ladies, master, they ain't a rough sart, like we"—this did not mean his hearer, only himself and his congeners—"and she might easy get tender-hearted what with thinkin' over. And I'd never be the worse, bless you!"
"I see what you mean, Jim." The light dawns; the speaker had been till then in the dark. He has a laugh ready for it, as he adds: "You thought the lady would be unhappy when she found she'd been talking to a blind man about his eyesight? Wasn't that it?" That was it, clearly. But Jim discerns a justification for his idea, when he learns that his blindness had been fully talked over.
"There's just what I said, in that, ye see!" says he. "The lady wouldn't be talking, not to hurt my feelings! Jim Coupland's feelings now!... where are we at that?" They seem to be a rare good joke to Jim. But there is material for regret in the background. "'Tain't a matter to cry one's eyes out over," says he, "but a bit of a pity, too!..."
"What is, Jim?"
"If I'd kept a lookout ahead, I could have steered the good lady clear of any fret about me and my eyesight. And if we'd only 'a known, I might 'a told her the starry o' the Flying Dutchman—just for entertainment like! A yarn's a yarn, master!"
Athelstan Taylor was puzzled on his way home by the curious selection of a restless conscience as aliment for disquiet. But thinking back on his own past, he found that his disquiets had not been about his mistakes that had most harmed others. Could he not remember his own prolonged remorse, at five years old, when an overtwist brought off the wooden leg of a minute doll, and he had the meanness to put the limb in place, and leave it, sound to all seeming, for its owner to discover its calamity? And how he never told! Even now, he wished he had confessed. It was no use now! The sister that doll had belonged to had been dead thirty years, and this tale he had just heard was, so he gathered, well within the last twenty.
He was wondering that evening, after writing to Gus, whether his friend, whose place he was so glad to occupy, would not have raised some technical difficulty about the Administration of the Sacrament in rubber gloves, when a note came from his friend the House Surgeon. Had the man he had talked with given his name? It appeared that the name entered in the list of patients was an alias. Probably he had several aliases. But he had a right to be buried and registered under his last one. A line by return would do. The letter made very light of the matter—said the deceased couldn't have had any property!
Athelstan Taylor's reply was that the name given, as far as he could hear it, was Edward Kay Thorne. He walked out and posted it himself, as the servants had gone to bed. He posted at the same time his letter to his friend Gus, to which he had added a long postscript about the events of the day. "You need not think," it ended, "that I have broken the 'seal of the confessional' in telling this man's story. He said I was at liberty to do as I liked." He felt rather glad to have a sharer in such a confidence. Then he went back to his comfortable library, put coals on the fire, and sat up till one in the morning reading.
CHAPTER XVIII
THAT NASTY LITTLE STETHOSCOPE! A RETROSPECT ABOUT THE RECTOR AND MISS FOSSETT. A TRANSACTION IN KISSES. AUNT STINGY'S WEEDS, AND WHAT A GOOD COOK SHE WAS
The dead drunkard's funeral expenses had been made conditional on his widow postponing her visit to the Hospital. No doubt the stress laid by Miss Fossett and her brother's friend on Jim's unfitness to receive visitors, was owing to their desire to justify this. It is fair to say that the woman spent the money honourably on its assigned object. She belonged to a class that expresses its emotions in the presence of Death by the celebration of obsequies, just as much as Kings and Princes—perhaps even more, considering its limitations. The classes that keep funeral ecstasies in check are to be found half-way on the human ladder, somewhere.
The object of using the power thus gained was not so much to conceal the story of the drunkard's death—for it was soon clear that Jim would not be injuriously affected by hearing of that—as to keep from him that Lizarann was the worse for her exposure in the snow on that terrible night. It appeared to Miss Fossett and the Rev. Athelstan—or Yorick, as she always called him and thought of him—that a certain amount of playing double was justified by the circumstances. It might have been a very serious throwback to Jim to know that his little lass was being kept away from him by anything but his own wish to be "on his pins again" next time he saw her; and he held on so stoically to his resolution not to see her till then that it seemed a very diluted mendaciousness to say no more of Lizarann's health than that she had caught a slight cold, and would be much better cared for at the schoolhouse than at her aunt's—unless, indeed, Jim especially wished Mrs. Steptoe to have her back. Jim didn't.
"She's such a nice little girl in herself, Yorick," said Miss Fossett a fortnight after Lady Arkroyd's visit to the Hospital, "that one wishes it could be managed." She was referring to a suggestion her ladyship had made.
"Does one, altogether?" was Yorick's reply. "What was it she said?—'Get her away from her terrible surroundings, and give her a chance of doing well.' Our Baronetess is a good-hearted woman in reality—with a little flummery—only she's apt to be taken in by sounding phrases. This one would either mean taking the little person away from her Daddy, or else getting him away from his terrible surroundings. Who's to do it, Addie? You would shirk the task just as much as I, if you knew Jim."
"But couldn't he be got away, too?"
"Well!—of course, I was thinking of that as impracticable at the moment."
"But is it?"
"Why—no! It's only a question of money. Jim would be ductile enough, I see that. I suppose I should be right in getting Sir Murgatroyd's money used that way?"
"Certainly. He has twenty thousand a year. What does it matter? One-pound-five a week is fifty-two pounds for the pound, and thirteen pounds for the five shillings—one-fourth part. Sixty-five pounds! Oh, Yorick, what can it matter?"
"I don't know," says Yorick. He is one of those rare people who don't think misappropriation of funds grows less and less immoral in the inverse ratio of the one borne to them by the source of their supply.
"Well!—I do," says Miss Fossett. "Sir Murgatroyd can perfectly well afford it."
There was time to discuss the matter, and Yorick and Miss Fossett did so at intervals during the weeks that followed. Discussion of any project favours its materialization, which often comes about more because it is kept alive than in consequence of any agreement on details among its promoters. The idea that "something would have to be done" about Lizarann and her Daddy took root both in Grosvenor Square and the neighbourhood of Tallack Street, and only waited for Jim's wooden leg, to become a reality. It was taken for granted that Lizarann's cough, which was really hardly anything now, would be quite gone by then, and that her pulse would be normal. Six whole weeks!
Meanwhile Lizarann herself was not prepared to admit there was anything the matter with her. She secretly regarded the whole thing as a conspiracy to keep her away from her Daddy—a conspiracy somehow fostered and encouraged by Dr. Ferris's stethoscope; but not one to be denounced and rebelled against, because of the obviously good intentions of Teacher, the gentleman, and the doctor-gentleman. It wasn't their fault! They were misled by that audacious little lying pipe, which was no use either to play upon or look through, and yet had the effrontery to pretend you could listen with it. Absurd!
Other forms of medical investigation she regarded as games, and resolved that when she and her Daddy were back at Aunt Stingy's, she was going to ply them gymes with Bridgetticks. She would listen to Bridgetticks's chest with a hoopstick many a day when the spring came, and weather permitted doorsteps. And vice versa; fair play, of course! And she would get her down flat, and put one hand on lots of different places on her chest, and thud it unfairly hard with the other, and say, "Does that hurt you?" and make her draw long breaths. She accepted diagnosis as human and lovable in benefactors, but still a weakness, and a sure road to misapprehension in chest cases.
If it had not been for cod-liver oil, and restraints, and mustard poultices that printed her small chest red, she would have regarded the whole thing as a lark, especially in view of the banquets that accompanied it. And was she not assured that Daddy was having the same, only heaps more? The oil was the worst trial. It pretended to be tasteless certainly, but that was mere pharmaceutical hypocrisy; the bottles knew better, whatever the labels might say. Her first hearing of the name of this nasty elixir vitæ produced a curious confusion in her mind, the revelation of which shocked Miss Fossett, taxed Yorick's command of his countenance, and made the doctor chuckle at intervals all the way home. For she recalled an occasion on which the Rev. Wilkinson Wilkins had denounced "ungodly livers." Herein lay great possibilities of misapprehension, and Lizarann was not slow to infer that cod-liver oil was divine, as opposed to some still worse abomination on draught in the opposite camp—devil-liver oil, perhaps!
The foregoing shows to what an extent Teacher had turned her residence next door to the School into a hospital for the accommodation of this case. The good-natured lady was always liable to get involved in the fortunes of any of her young students, and though the present one had no claim on her that a hundred others might not have had, she was no doubt a lovable child, and her courage under trial had fairly engaged the affections of the Rev. Athelstan. Now Yorick had always been an idol of Adeline Fossett's from the day when he was first introduced to her, a girl his junior in years, but older than he for all that, as an Eton friend to whom her favourite brother probably owed his life. She had been much in his confidence in the years that followed; had been his great friend and adviser all through his Oxford days; had sympathized with him in all his youthful love-affairs. Why it was invariably taken for granted that he and she were always to beat up different covers for a lifelong mate it would have been difficult to say. But so it was, and so it continued, quite to the seeming satisfaction of both. She remained his confidante during all the hesitations and perplexities of his courtship of Sophia Caldecott, while only giving a qualified approval to his choice; and when he departed, beaming, with that young lady on a wedding-tour, she honestly believed that her own burst of tears as soon as she found herself, after the day's excitement, alone with her sense that the world had got empty and chill, was due to the fact that Yorick had married, as she viewed the matter, the wrong sister—Sophia instead of Elizabeth, her great friend. Sophia was the pretty one, of course! But men were blind!
Adeline's life was so interwoven with that of a brother who, she believed, would certainly never marry that she looked on herself as not entered for the race of life at all. The idea held her with such force that she could build castles in the air for a bosom friend without a suspicion of a wish for self-election to their suzerainship. Sophia—once fourteen, and nothing—changed into a woman and captured the best castle for herself. Is it certain that Elizabeth's entry into that castle would have left Adeline's world so much less empty and chill? Who can say? All there is room to tell here is that Sophia's death came in a few years; and that Adeline's contemplation of Elizabeth's instalment as Queen Regent, without rights of coronation, was productive of involutions of thought and feeling that would have baffled Robert Browning. She was glad to believe she believed her secret grief that Yorick and Elizabeth could never be man and wife genuine. Perhaps it was.
Very likely the readiness of Miss Fossett to harbour and cherish Lizarann does not want such an elaborate explanation. Lizarann, as the story has shown, was far from being an unattractive scrap in herself, although the mouth was too large for beauty—no doubt of it! She was especially so in these well-washed days when Miss Fossett went after her own very early breakfast to wake her in the morning; or, if awake, to prevent her trying to get up before Dr. Ferris came.
"Maten't I go to see Daddy to-day, Teacher?" she said—always the first question—one such morning about a month after her appropriation by Miss Fossett.
"Maten't you—funny child! Mayn't you's what you mean. No, dear, you mayn't—not yet! No till Dr. Ferris says yes. You must be a good little girl and have patience." For Miss Fossett knew children too well to weep with them invariably in their troubles. Here was one that would bear a bracing treatment. Its effect this time was that a sob never came to maturity—was resolutely swallowed—and that the career of a couple of tears was nipped in the bud by a nightgown-sleeve. A sniff made a protest in their favour, but cut a poor figure. Courage had the best of it.
"Mustn't I only send a kiss to Daddy, Teacher?" Lizarann says this very ruefully.
"Teacer!" Miss Fossett mimics her pronunciation. "Of course you may, dear, as many as you like! You give them to me, and I'll see that Daddy gets them." This is very rash, as Lizarann springs like a tiger, and discharges a volley that would have kept a game of kiss-in-the-ring going for a fortnight. An evil, you will say, easily endurable by a childless woman, with perhaps a hungry heart! Agreed. But embarrassing complications followed. As soon as Lizarann, who was evidently going to be much better to-day, had disposed of a very respectable breakfast for an invalid, and was brought into good form to receive the doctor—she was very nice when she smelt of soap, was Lizarann—her mind harked back on the kissing transaction.
"Who shall you give the skisses to, to tike to Daddy?"
"Never you mind! Daddy shall get them, and that's enough for any little girl at this time in the morning. Now lie still and be good. There's Dr. Ferris's knock."
Lizarann complied. But curiosity rankled. Would Miss Fossett entrust those kisses to Dr. Ferris to give to Daddy? That was the substance of the question that came in perfect good faith from the pillow Lizarann was lying still and being good on. And this with Dr. Ferris audible below!
"Most certainly not! I don't know him well enough." This was very decisive; and Lizarann's impersonal mind discerned in it a mistrust of the goods reaching their destination. Dr. Ferris might give them to someone else. Another carrier must be found.
"But you do the gentleman?"
"Yes, of course! I could give them to the gentleman. But we'll do better than that, Lizarann. I'll give them back to you, and you'll give them to the gentleman." An arrangement that pleases Lizarann, whose allegation that there was siskteen, makes the refund a long job. It lasts till the doctor knocks at the room door.
"Who were you talking to, Doctor?" Lizarann's tickle is still on the speaker's face, as she smooths matters—hair and such-like.
"It's the aunt, Widow Steptoe...."
"Do take care, Doctor!"
"Oh—I forgot! It's all right, I think, though ... she wants a testimonial, to say she can cook. She can't, of course! How's the patient?"
"Look and see! I suppose I must see Mrs. Steptoe. She wants to talk, you know. I could just as easily write to this Mrs. What's-her-name ... oh yes; I know who it's for ... as have a long talkee-talkee. If she keeps me, come in as you go, to tell me."
There is a twofold advantage in the loss of a husband who is a curse to your existence—who is bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, with all the disadvantages of a community of goods, such as was endured by Zohak the tyrant, who shared his with two serpents that had grown out of him, and partook of him at intervals. One gain is, that your husband is now no more—as the vernacular puts it when not claiming various forms of hereafters for the departed; the other, that we may now mourn his loss and ascribe beauties of character to him without fear of his coming to life to give them practical disclaimers. We can do it with crape, and if we can't afford a pair of black kids, Lisle thread lasts a long time, if wore careful; indeed, Mrs. Hacker, whose testimony we are quoting, was able to dwell on the cheapness of job-lots in the article of mourning, and the advantages we enjoy from sales—advantages unknown to Zohak in his day; only perhaps his snakes outlived him. If they did, there can have been no false note in the pathos with which they spoke of him as "now no more."
Mrs. Steptoe, having been so liberally assisted towards funeral expenses, had been able to enjoy herself thoroughly over the millinery department. Even Bridgetticks had been impressed by the respectability of her appearance. Tallack Street felt it, and joined in tributes to the moral qualities of Mr. Steptoe. It did not shut its eyes to his failing, but rather utilized it to the advantage of his memory, sketching an exalted character that he would certainly have possessed if it had not been undermined by his unfortunate propensity. Each male inhabitant of Tallack Street could conscientiously call upon all his neighbours to bear witness to the many times he had dwelt on what a good, honest, generous, trustworthy nature underlay this unfortunate proclivity to drinking spirits continually, during waking hours, whenever he had a trup'ny bit left, or could get credit, or stood treat to. All agreed to regard it as a sort of involuntary habit, like blinking; or at worst a flaw in culture—like eating peas, or the butter, with the blade of your knife. "The man he was, be'ind it all!"—that was what Tallack Street looked at. The Philosopher might, if Time permitted, have exclaimed: "De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio!" Tallack Street would have replied, forcibly as we think, that it warn't messin' about with any blooming reasonings—only turning of it over like.
But we doubt if Tallack Street would have recognized Uncle Bob's virtues so readily if his widow's grief had been less effectively shown.
Her mourning gownd was that respectable to look at you couldn't 'ardly tell her for Mrs. Steptoe, goin' along the street, or in at the butcher's. Whereat Tallack Street shook its heads, and accepted the past as a lesson for the future, its older ones saying to its younger ones: "Pore Bob! What did I tell you, N. or M., concernin' of small goes of gin took at all hours and no sort o' system!" The tone of melancholy forgiving retrospect being entirely a reaction produced by the correct attire of the widow.
The same influence made Miss Fossett believe, for the moment, that Mrs. Steptoe could cook, for all Dr. Ferris said. She wrote a testimonial for her which suggested that behind the good plain-cooking accomplishment, as scheduled, were unexplored possibilities this candidate for a place would not lay claim to, from modesty. But for the applicant's decent gown and gloves and new umbrella, she would have thought nothing of her account of her cooking powers, as shown many years since in the early days of her marriage, in certain apartments at Ramsgate, where her husband then worked, before they came to London. She had then cooked a dinner for ten persons, with entrées and sweets. Miss Fossett hesitated, metaphorically, to swallow this dinner—tried to persuade Mrs. Steptoe to reduce it to eight. That good woman, however, on taxing her memory, rather showed a disposition to increase it to twelve. On which Miss Fossett surrendered at discretion.
"Of course you'll soon get your hand back again, Mrs. Steptoe; and I hope you'll get this place." At this point the character was written, with a full certificate of the circumstances. It seemed worded to convey that a female cordon bleu, who had been seeing better days, had been forced by ill-hap to resume her old rôle of life. Completing it, Miss Fossett again spoke: "Where did you say you were in service, Mrs. Steptoe? Ramsgate?"
"Not exactly in service, miss."
"What, then?"
"In apartments to let." Mrs. Steptoe seemed a little uncertain; like a respectable person telling fibs, and in a difficulty. Then she saw her way, and went on, relieved. "I was requested to it, as a faviour. Owing to landlady indisposed—having known her from early childhood." She was proud of this expression evidently. "By the name of Cantrip. I was left in charge, and give every satisfaction. Thirty-two, Sea View Terrace, on the clift."
"And the lodgers had ten people at dinner!" Miss Fossett was surprised, and showed it. The image her mind formed of thirty-two, Sea View Terrace, did not jump with a dinner of ten persons, with entrées and sweets. But was it reasonable in not doing so? Mrs. Steptoe must have appreciated the difficulty, for she threw in, "Did you know the house, miss?" and the question was skilful. Miss Fossett admitted that she did not. "But I certainly thought it seemed a large party for a lodging-house," said she, feeling apologetic. She did not wish to be unjust, even to a lodging-house.
Mrs. Steptoe was all amazement that the extensive accommodation of Sea View Terrace should be unknown anywhere in Europe. Her desire to express it seemed to expand beyond dictionaries. Her sakes—why, a many more could have sat down! She then went on to substantiate her statement, giving the names of the guests: "There was Mr. and Mrs. Hallock and family was five, staying in the apartments. And Mrs. Bridgman and her daughter was seven. And Mr. and Mrs. Thorne, and Mr. Hollings—no!—Harris, a young gentleman from town. Countin' up to ten!" Mrs. Steptoe was triumphant. Such detail would verify anything.
"Well!—anyhow, there's the letter, Mrs. Steptoe, and I hope you'll get the place and do well." Miss Fossett was convinced the good woman had been lying, more or less; and so she had, but the only portion of her statement that affects this story was true enough. She had relieved her conscience about the fib that she had cooked this dinner by giving the actual names of those who had eaten it as nearly as she remembered them. Can we not sympathize with her? Are we not human?
She took the letter with abasement and deep gratitude, neither altogether unconnected with a religious fog, unexplained, hanging about the memory of her lamented husband. She inquired after her brother—was looking forward to seeing him on Friday, the next visiting-day at the Hospital—understood he had asked for her to come, with a distinct implication that his nature was a neglectful one, and that she was neglected.
"He has asked for you several times," said Miss Fosset. "But Mr. Taylor thought—so did I—that it would be best for him to know nothing of your husband's death till he was stronger. He puts it down to the Hospital regulations—thinks you have not been admitted. Mr. Taylor will tell him all about it before you see him."
"As you and the gentleman think best, miss! And the little girl, you was a-sayin', is better?"
"The little girl is a great deal better. Wait a minute, and I'll ask Dr. Ferris if he thinks you could see her."
Mrs. Steptoe, who was quite able to keep her anxiety to see her niece in due subordination, dwelt upon her unwillingness to encroach on Miss Fossett's time. Who, accounting these professions honest—which they weren't—went away and met the doctor coming down. He had been a long time over his patient, she remarked. "This patient," said he, "is good company. Glad to say she's going on capitally. Temperature all but normal."
"That aunt-woman's here still." Miss Fossett drops her voice to say this. "Could I take her up to see her safely, do you think?"
"Can you be sure she won't talk about her conf ... about her husband, I mean?"
"Ye-es! I think so, if she promises. I don't know."
"It can't do any great harm, in any case. The child is thinking of nothing but Daddy. Five past nine—oh dear! I'm off ... oh yes!—you may try it." And off goes the doctor.
As to Lizarann's interview with her aunt that followed, a few words will be enough. For no story can record everything everywhere closely; it must take and reject. It was, on the part of Aunt Stingy, an unpresumptuous interview, fraught with meek reminders to little girls of what was due on their part towards their benefactors; as also with suggestions of the depravities inherent in all their species. An interview mysteriously saturated with a sense of religious precepts refrained from, but conferring a sense of moral superiority in one who could, had she chosen, have become a well-spring and fountain-head of little-girl-crushing platitudes. On Lizarann's part, an interview with a background of indictments against herself undisclosed connected, no doubt, somehow with her demeanour on the terrible occasion when she saw her aunt and uncle last. She dared not ask what she had done, preferring to refer her blood-guiltiness—of which, as a general rule, she entertained no doubt—in this case to the lucifer-match negotiation which had induced Uncle Bob to leave hold. That seemed more likely than that she had left the street-door stood on the jar. Of course, she might have been convicted of concealed chestnuts; or even, by some necromancy, Aunt Stingy might have divined how near she had felt to passing the forbidden Vatted Rum Corner limit. But the lucifer-match theory seemed the most probable—not to be broached, however, without the gentleman himself there to protect her. Teacher was good—angelic, indeed—but she was uninformed. And who could say that the evil plausibilities of a subtle human aunt might not persuade her to turn against her protégée, and rend her? However, the question was not raised, and Lizarann felt grateful when the said aunt departed, after a horny farewell peck.
But as soon as she had departed, Lizarann became suddenly talkative. "Is Aunt Stingy's new gownd pide for?" said she.
"Inquisitive little monkey!" said Teacher. "Perhaps it is; perhaps it isn't."
"What did it costited?" asked Lizarann. But she was really uninterested about the purchase. She was keeping the question before the House in the hope that the debate would throw a light on a collateral point. "Mrs. Hacker's married daughter Sarah was a widow," said she, to give the conversation a lift. "She wore her cloze out, she did."
But why had widowhood come suddenly on the tapis? Evidently sharp ears had heard the doctor's indiscreet speech. Miss Fossett grasped the position. Lizarann would have to know some time. Why not now?
"Poor Aunt Stingy!" She spoke with her eye on Lizarann, on the watch for a guess on the child's part that would assist disclosure. She saw in the large puzzled orbs that met hers, and the small hands pulling nervously at the sheet, that the idea she wanted was either dawning or fructifying. She continued: "Aunt Stingy will have to be a widow now, Lizarann."
The idea had taken hold, and another young mind that up to that moment had looked on Death as a visitor to other families, not hers, had got to face the black terror—just as terrible a mystery, just as cold a cloud, when that which dies is what none would wish should live, as when all worth living for seems lost with it. Even the opportune removal of an Uncle Bob turns the whole world into an antechamber of the great Unknown, and veils the sun in heaven. Nobody had died, in Lizarann's immediate circle, so far, and as for outsiders that was their look out! Uncle Bob wasn't wanted certainly, rather the reverse; but none the less the two large eyes that were fixed on Miss Fossett's informing face filled slowly with tears, and their small owner's hands came out towards her, feeling for something to cry on. Yes!—Uncle Bob was dead, and would never mend any more boots; thus, substantially, the testimony of Teacher, confirming and amplifying the deluge that followed. It was some time before mere awe of Death allowed Lizarann to refer to the fact that Daddy would never enjoy Uncle Bob's society again; there may have been ambiguity here—was it all unmixed disadvantage?—and still longer, quite late in the day, in fact, before her reflections reminded her that Mrs. Hacker's married daughter Sarah, having wore her cloze out, took up with Mr. Brophy, her present husband. A reminiscence evidently recording the exact language of older persons than herself.
"What did you say was the name of that gentleman you met at Royd, Yorick?—the amusing one?..."
"Brownrigg?"
"No—the other."
"Challis."
"The same name as the author?"
"He is the author. Titus Scroop is his nom-de-plume. Why do you ask?"
"Because it must be his wife I wrote Mrs. Steptoe's character for last week. Mrs. Alfred Challis, The Hermitage, Wimbledon."
"Oh yes—that would be. How did you know of her?"
"That Mrs. Eldridge—she's a sort of cousin, you know—wrote to see if I knew of a cook."
"But you knew nothing about Mrs. Steptoe's cooking."
"No—but she can try."
"I don't call that conscientious."
"Oh, my dear Yorick? Isn't that just like you now? If everyone was such a dragon, no one would ever do a good-natured action."
"Was it good-natured—to Mrs. Challis?"
"It may turn out so. Mrs. Steptoe may be a real treasure."
The above is short and explains itself. The time of it may have been three days after the previous story time.