It was not until Christopher had passed his fourteenth birthday that he came face to face once more with the distant past. He had crossed Westminster Bridge to watch the trams on the other side, and from there, being in an adventurous mood, he had wandered out into vague regions lying beyond, regions of vast warehouses, of narrow, dirty streets and squalid houses, of sudden palaces of commerce towering over the low tide of mean roofs. Suddenly turning a corner, he had come on a block of “model dwellings,” and an inrush of memories brought him to a standstill before the giant ugly pile.

There, on the topmost floor of the east corner of Block D, had lived Martha Sartin, and Marley Sartin, packer at one of the big warehouses near, also Jessie Sartin and numerous other Sartins, including Sam, who was about Christopher’s age; there in the dull asphalt court Sam and Christopher had played, and up that steep stairway had climbed in obedience to husky shouts from over the iron railings of the top landing.

It was all so vivid, so unaltered, so sharply set in Christopher’s mind that he had to look down at his own immaculate blue suit and unpatched boots to reassure himself he was not waiting for Martha’s shrill order to “come up out of the dirt.” But assured once more of his own present personality he could not resist exploring further, and went right up to the foot of the iron staircase and looked up. It was all just as sordid and dirty and unlovely as ever, though he had not known before the measure of its undesirableness. Leaning over the railing of the top landing was 106 an untidy-looking woman in a brown skirt and half-fastened blouse. She looked over into the yard and shouted in a voice that made Christopher jump.

“Jim, come up out of the dirt, you little varmint!”

And Christopher, erstwhile Jim, leant against the wall and felt his head was whirling round. Then he inspected himself again, but at that moment a shock-headed dirty mite of four years brushed past him and began to clamber up the stairs, pushing his way through the horde of small babies on each landing and squealing shrilly, “I’m coming, Mammie.”

Christopher went too. He could not possibly have resisted the impulse, for assuredly it was Martha’s voice that called—called him back willy nilly to the past that after all was not so far past except in a boy’s measure of time.

A dark-eyed, decent-looking woman passed him on the stair and looked at him curiously; further on a man, smoking a pipe, took the trouble to follow him to the next floor in a loafing fashion. The small Jim, out of breath and panting with the exertion of the climb, was being roughly dusted by an undoubted Martha when Christopher reached the topmost landing. She was stouter than of yore, and her hair was no longer done up in iron curlers as of old, also a baby, younger than Jim, was crawling out of the room on the right. But it was Martha Sartin, and Christopher advanced a friendly hand.

Mrs. Sartin gazed at the apparition with blank amazement. She could connect the tall, pleasant-faced boy in his spotless suit and straw hat with nothing in her memory. He did not look as if he could belong to the theatre at which she was a dresser, but it seemed the only solution.

“Are you come from Miss Vassour?” she asked doubtfully.

“Don’t you know me, Mrs. Sartin?” 107

“Know ye? No. How should I?”

“I’m Jim Hibbault.”

“Garn!”

“Yes, I am really.” Poor Christopher began to feel embarrassed and a little disappointed.

He was Jim Hibbault at that moment and he felt queerly lonely and stranded.

Martha pulled down her sleeves and went to the inner door.

“Jessie, come out ’ere,” she screamed.

Christopher felt his heart go thump. He had almost forgotten Jessie, yet Jessie had been more to him than Martha in other days. It was Jessie who had taken him for walks, carried him up the steep stairs on her back, shared sweets with him, cuffed her brother Sam when they fought, and had finally taken little Jim Hibbault back to his mother when the great clock in the distance struck six,—Jessie, who at eleven had been a complete little mother and was at sixteen a tall, lanky, untidy girl who had inherited the curling pins of her mother and whose good-natured, not ill-looking face was not improved thereby.

She came to the doorway and stood looking over her mother’s arm at Christopher.

“Ever seed ’im afore?” demanded Mrs. Sartin.

“Well I never, if it ain’t Jimmy!” cried Jessie, beaming, and Christopher could have embraced her if it were in accordance with the custom of his years, and he felt less inclined to bolt down the stairs out of reach of his adventure.

Neither of the two women expressed any pleasure at his appearance. Mrs. Sartin accepted her daughter’s recognition of their visitor as sufficient evidence it was not a hoax, and asked Christopher in.

The room, though the window was open, smelt just as stuffy as of old, and a familiar litter of toys and odds and ends strewed the floor. Christopher missed 108 the big tea-tray and Britannia metal teapot, but the sofa with broken springs was still there, covered as it had ever been with the greater part of the family wardrobe.

Christopher sat in the armchair, and Mrs. Sartin, having plumped the baby into its chair, sat down by the door. The small Jimmy pulled at her apron. Jessie leant against the wall and giggled. No one said anything. Christopher began to wish he had not come.

“I never could remember the name of this place,” he began at last, desperately. “I just came on it by accident to-day, and remembered everything all at once.”

“Shilla Buildings, that’s what it’s called,” said Mrs. Sartin nodding her head. “Block 7, C. Door.”

Silence again. A strict sense of etiquette prevented either of the feminine side of the company from uttering the question burning on their tongues.

“I did see Sam once, a long time ago,” Christopher struggled on, “but I could not catch him.” He got red and embarrassed again.

“’Ows your Ma?” asked Mrs. Sartin at last.

“She’s dead,” explained Christopher very gravely, “five years ago now—more.”

“Lor’. To think of it. I never thought she was one to live long. And she went back to her friends after all, I suppose.”

It was not a question: it was only a statement to be confirmed or contradicted or ignored as the hearer liked.

“She died in the Union at Whitmansworth,” said Christopher bluntly. “I lived there afterwards and then someone adopted me. Mr. Aymer Aston, son of Mr. Aston. Perhaps you know the name.”

Mrs. Sartin appeared to consult an imaginary visiting list.

“No, I can’t say as I do. Do you, Jessie?” 109

Jessie shook her head. She had ceased to look at their visitor; instead, she looked at his boots, and her cheeks grew red.

“I thought I would like to see if you were still here.”

“Very good of you, I’m sure.” It was not meant ironically, it was solely addressed to the blue suit and brown boots, but it nearly reduced the wearer of these awe-inspiring clothes to tears.

For the moment, in the clutch of the past, with associations laying gripping hands on him and with his curious faculty of responding to the outward call, Aston House and the Astons became suddenly a faint blurred impression to Christopher, less real and tangible than these worn, sordid surroundings. Had anyone just then demanded his name he would undoubtedly have responded “Hibbault.” He felt confused and wretched, alive to the fact that little Jim Hibbault had neither people nor home nor relations in the world, if these once kindly women had no welcome for him.

“I heard you call Jim,” he hazarded at last, in an extremity of disconcerted shyness.

Mrs. Sartin eyed the four-year-old nestling in her apron and pulled him from cover.

“Yes, that be Jim. We called ’im Jim arter you. He was born arter you an’ your ma went away.”

He longed to ask after Marley of unhappy memory, but the possibilities were too apparent for him to venture, so silence again fell over them.

At this precise juncture of affairs a shrill whistle was heard ascending the stairway, growing momentarily louder and louder till it became earsplitting in intensity as it arrived on landing No. 6. The author of it pulled open the door and the whistle tailed off into a faint “phew” at sight of the embarrassed group. The new-comer was a thin-faced lad with light sandy 110 hair cropped close to his square head. He had light, undetermined eyes that were keen and lively. Christopher had beaten him in the matter of size, but there were latent possibilities in his ill-developed form.

Christopher sprang up and rushed forward, then suddenly stopped.

“Ullo, mother, didn’t know as ’ow you ’ad swell company this arternoon. I’d ’ave put on my best suit and topper,” he grinned affably as he deposited on the floor a big basket he carried.

“Oh, I say, Sam—don’t you know me either?” began poor Christopher.

He wheeled round, stared hard, and a broad smile of recognition spread over his face.

“Why, if it ain’t Jim,” he cried and seized his hand with a fervour that set Christopher aglowing and strangely enough set him free from the clinging shadow of his lost identity. This was tangible flesh and blood and of the real authentic present.

“Well, I’m blowed,” ejaculated Sam, stepping back to look at his erstwhile companion, “to think of you turning up again such a toff. No need to ask what sort of luck came your way. My. Ain’t ’e a swell, just.”

But unlike the women, he was unabashed by externals. He demanded “tea” of his mother that very moment, “cos ’e ’adn’t no time for dinner and ’is bloke ’ad sent ’im round to get a bit o’ somethink now,” at a slack hour.

“Greengrocer business, Clare Street,” he explained. “Seven shillings a week. Not a bad old cove. What d’yer say about yourself?”

He had the whole history out of Christopher in five minutes.

The women listened and flung in “Well, I never’s,” and “Who’d ’ave thought it’s” from time to time and thawed into ordinary human beings under Sam’s convivial 111 example. In the end Sam offered sincere if oddly-expressed congratulations, and disappeared into the back kitchen to wash his hands. Jessie, too, vanished mysteriously, eventually returning minus the curling pins and plus a row of impossible curls and a bright blue blouse bedecked with cheap lace. Mrs. Sartin meanwhile tidied up by kicking the scattered toys under the sofa.

“Them sisters what looks arter the poor is always givin’ broken rubbish to the children,” she exclaimed. “Not but what they mean it kindly, but it makes a heap of muck to clear up.”

Christopher nodded his head comprehendingly, by no means so hurt at her ingratitude as a real Christopher Aston might have been.

The good woman bustled about, and eventually the family drew up round the tea table. The cloth might have been cleaner, the cups and saucers have borne a longer acquaintance with water, and there was a spoon short, though no one was so ill-mannered as to allude to it. Jessie unobtrusively shared hers with her mother under cover of the big tea-pot. There was bread and a yellow compound politely alluded to as butter, and a big pot of jam. The younger Sartins gorged silently on this, all unreproved by a preoccupied mother. Mrs. Sartin, indeed, became quite voluble and told Christopher how she was now first dresser at the Kings Theatre and how Jessie was just taken on in the wardrobe room.

“Which is uncertain hours,” Mrs. Sartin explained, “but it’s nice to be together in the same ’ouse, and one couldn’t want a kinder gentleman than Mr. X. to do with. I’ve been there ten years and never ’ad a cross word with ’im. And ’e was that good when Marley was took, and never turned me off as some of ’em do.” She stopped suddenly under the stress of Sam’s lowering countenance. Jessie hastily passed her 112 bread, “which I thanks you for, but will say what I was a-goin’ to, for all Sam’s kicks under the table,” continued the hostess, defiantly regarding her confused offspring.

The confusion spread to Christopher, who looked at his plate and got red. Sam pushed back his chair; there was a very ugly scowl on his face. His undaunted mother addressed herself to their guest.

“No woman ever ’ad a better ’usband than Marley, though I ses it, but Sam here ’s that ’ard ’e won’t let me speak of my own man if ’e can ’elp ’it. ’Is own father, too. Ah, if ’e ’ad ’ad a bad father, Sam would ’ave know what to be thankful for.”

“I’m thankful ’e’s gone,” burst out Sam, with sudden anger. “I asks you, ’ow’s a cove to get on when he’s ’itched up to a father wot’s done time? Why, old Greenum gave me a shillin’ a week less than ’e ought, cos why, ’e knew I couldn’t ’old out with a father like that,” and he eyed his mother wrathfully.

“A better ’usband no woman ’ad,” sobbed Mrs. Sartin. “When ’e came out ’e didn’t seem to get no chance and so....”

“Is he in London?” asked Christopher, nervously gulping down some tea.

“No—sloped,” said Sam, shortly, “cribbed some other chap’s papers I guess—went abroad—we don’t know—don’t want to, either.”

The fierce hostility and resentment in the boy’s voice made it clear to Christopher this was evidently a subject better dropped. He seized the chance of directing Jessie’s attention to Master Jim Sartin, who was brandishing the bread-knife, and plunged hastily into a description of the doings of Charlotte and Max. Mrs. Sartin accepted the diversion, but kept an anxious eye on Sam, who ate hard and seemed to recover some of his ordinary composure with each mouthful, much to Christopher’s amazement. By the time tea was 113 finished he was himself again. There was no lingering then. He went back to work. Christopher said he must go too, and bade the family good-bye. The farewell was as cordial as the welcome had been cold and he clattered downstairs after Sam with many promises to come again.

The two boys talked freely of the passing world as they went through the streets, in the purely impersonal way of their age, and it was with great diffidence and much hesitation Christopher managed to hint he’d like to buy something for the kiddies.

Sam grinned.

“Sweets,” he suggested. “They eat ’em up and leave no mess about.”

Christopher turned out his pockets. There was an unbroken ten shillings, three shillings and some coppers.

They walked on a while gravely and came to a stand before a confectioner’s window.

“Cake,” suggested Sam, with one eye on his companion and one on the show of food within.

“A sugar one?”

“They cost a lot,” said Sam shaking his head, but he followed Christopher inside. Christopher boldly demanded the price of a small wedding cake elaborately iced. It was five shillings.

He put down the money with a lofty air and desired them to send it without loss of time to Mrs. Sartin’s address.

The woman stared a little at the oddly assorted couple, but the money rang true and the order was booked.

As they hurried towards Clare Street, Christopher diffidently asked if there was anything Mrs. Sartin would like, and Sam’s sharp wits seized the occasion to please his mother and Christopher and serve himself at the same time.

“Come on to my place and send her some lettuce,” 114 he suggested. “Mother’s main fond of lettuce. We’ve got some good ’uns in this morning.”

It was strictly true; it was also true that Master Sam had outstayed his meal-time and a new customer might help to avert the probable storm awaiting him, as indeed it did.

Mr. Gruner, greengrocer, was standing at the door of his shop looking both ways down the street at once, owing to a remarkable squint, and his reception of Sam was unfriendly, but quickly checked at the sight of his companion, whose extraordinary terms of intimacy with his errand boy rendered the good man nearly speechless. The young gent, however, ordered lettuces and green peas with a free hand and earned Sam’s pardon, as anticipated by that far-sighted youth.

The two boys said good-bye and Sam made no hint as to the possibilities of a future meeting, neither did Christopher, embarrassed by the presence of the greengrocer. He also would be late and hurried off, hoping he might still be in time to give Aymer tea and relate his adventures. He had no misgivings at all as to CÆsar’s approval of his doings.

As he came out into a main thoroughfare again he passed a big cheap drapery establishment and something in the gaudy, crude colouring there displayed brought him to a standstill. Jessie was still unprovided with a present. The two had exchanged very few words, but she by no means loomed in the background of the picture. He stood staring at the window and fingering the remaining coins in his pocket. One section of the shop front was hung with gaily-coloured feather boas. He was dimly conscious he had seen Mrs. Wyatt wear something of the sort in soft grey. There was a blue one that was the colour of Jessie’s blouse, or so Christopher thought, hanging high up. He did not admire it at all, but it suggested Jessie to him and after a moment’s consideration he 115 boldly pushed through the swinging doors and marched up the shop.

“I want one of those feather things in the window,” he announced to the shop-walker’s assiduous attentions.

He was delivered over to the care of an amused young woman, who proceeded to show him feather boas of all descriptions and qualities. Christopher was adamant.

“I want a blue thing that’s hanging up in the window, last but one on the top row,” he insisted, disdaining to look at the fluffy abominations spread around him. He was sure they were not like the thing Constantia wore now, but it was too late to retreat.

The young woman showed him one she declared was identical.

“I want the one in the window,” he persisted doggedly.

In the end he got it, paid for it, saw it packed up and addressed, and quenching sundry misgivings in his heart, marched out of the shop and treated himself to a bus homeward.

It is perhaps not out of place to mention here that Jessie had no misgivings as to the real beauty of the present. She had sighed long for such a possession, and having never seen Mrs. Wyatt’s delicate costly wrap, was perfectly content with her own and applauded Christopher’s taste loudly.