THE same frown darkened Risca's brow the next day as he waited for admittance at his Aunt Gladys's door. It was such a futile little door to such a futile little house; he could have smashed in the former with a blow of his fist, and he could have jumped into the latter through the first-floor windows. With his great bulk he felt himself absurdly out of scale. The tragedy looming huge in his mind was also absurdly out of scale with his errand. The house was one of a row of twenty perky, gabled, two-storied little villas, each coyly shrinking to the farthermost limit of its tiny front garden, and each guarding the privacy of its interior by means of muslin curtains at the windows, tied back by ribbons, the resultant triangle of transparency being obscured by a fat-leafed plant. The terrace bore the name of “Tregarthion Villas,” and the one inhabited by Miss Lindon was called “The Oaks.” It was a sham little terrace full of sham little gentilities. John hated it. What could have induced his mother's sister to inhabit such a sphere of flimsiness?
Flimsiness, also, met him inside, when he was shown through a bamboo-furnished passage into a gimcrack little drawing-room. He tried several chairs dubiously with his hand, shook his head, and seated himself on a couch. Everything in the room seemed flimsy and futile. He had the impression that everything save a sham spinning-wheel and a half-solved jig-saw puzzle on the little table was draped in muslin and tied up with pink ribbons. A decrepit black-and-tan terrier, disturbed in his slumbers in front of the fire, barked violently. A canary in a cage by the window sang in discordant emulation. John poised his hat and stick on the curved and slippery satin-covered couch, and they fell with a clatter to the floor. The frown deepened on his brow. Why had he come to this distracting abode of mindlessness? He wished he had brought Herold gyved and manacled. What with the dog and the canary and the doll's-house furniture, the sensitive and fastidious one would have gone mad. He would have gloated over his ravings. It would have served him right.
The door opened suddenly, the draught blowing down a fan and a photograph-frame, and Miss Lindon entered.
“My dear John, how good of you to come and see me!”
She was a fat, dumpy woman of fifty, lymphatic and, at first sight, characterless. She lacked colour. Her eyes were light, but neither blue nor green nor hazel; her straight hair was of the nondescript hue of light-brown hair turning gray. Her face was fleshy and sallow, marked by singularly few lines. She had lived a contented life, unscarred by care and unruffled by desire. Her dreams of the possibilities of existence did not pierce beyond the gimcrackeries of Tregarthion Villas. As for the doings of the great world,—wars, politics, art, social upheavals,—she bestowed on them, when they were obtruded on her notice, the same polite and unintelligent interest as she had bestowed on her nephew's athletic feats in the days gone by.
However, she smiled very amiably at John, and reached up to kiss him on both cheeks, her flabby, white hands lightly resting on each coat-sleeve. Having done this, she caught up the barking dog, who continued to growl from the soft shelter of arm and bosom with the vindictiveness of pampered old age.
“Naughty Dandy! I hope you were n't frightened at him, John. He never really does bite.”
“What does he do then? Sting?” John asked with gruff sarcasm.
“Oh, no,” said Miss Lindon, round-eyed; “he 's quite harmless, I assure you. Don't you remember Dandy? But it's a long time since you 've been to see me, John. It must be three or four years. What have you been doing all this time?”
Her complacency irritated him. The canary never ceased his ear-splitting noise. The canary is a beautiful, gentle bird—stuffed; alive, he is pestilence made vocal. Risca lost his temper.
“Surely you must know, Aunt Gladys. I 've been wandering through hell with a pack of little devils at my heels.”
Startled, she lifted up her arms and dropped Dandy, who slithered down her dress and sought a morose shelter under the table.
“My dear John!” she exclaimed.
“I'm very sorry; I did n't mean to use strong language,” said he, putting his hands to his ears. “It's all that infernal canary.”
“Oh, poor Dickie! Don't you like to hear Dickie sing? He sings so beautifully. The gas-man was here the other day and said that, if I liked, he would enter him for a competition, and he was sure he would get first prize. But if you don't like to hear him, dear—though I really can't understand why—I can easily make him stop.” She drew a white napkin from the drawer of the table on which the cage was placed and threw it over the top. The feathered steam-whistle swallowed his din in an angry gurgle or two and became silent “Poor Dickie, he thinks it 's a snowstorm! What were we talking about, John? Do sit down.”
John resumed his seat on the slippery couch, and Miss Lindon, having snatched Dandy from his lair, sat by his side, depositing the dog between them.
“You asked me what I had been doing for the last few years,” said he.
“Ah, yes. That 's why I wrote to you yesterday, dear.”
She had written to him, in fact, every month for many years, long, foolish letters in which everything was futile save the genuine affection underlying them, and more often than not John had taken them as read and pitched them into the waste-paper basket. His few perfunctory replies, however, had been treasured and neatly docketed and pigeon-holed in the bureau in her bedroom, together with the rest of her family archives and other precious documents. Among them was a famous recipe for taking mulberry stains out of satin. That she prized inordinately.
“I should n't like to drift apart from dear Ellen's boy,” she said with a smile.
“And I should n't like to lose touch with you, my dear aunt,” said John, with more graciousness. “And that is why I've come to see you to-day. I've had rather a bad time lately.”
“I know—that awful case in the papers.” She shivered. “Don't let us talk of it. You must try to forget it. I wrote to you how shocked I was. I asked you to come and stay with me, and said I would do what I could to comfort you. I believe in the ties of kinship, my dear, and I did n't like to think of you bearing your trouble alone.”
“That was very kind indeed of you,” said John, who had missed the invitation hidden away in the wilderness of the hastily scanned sixteen-page letter. He flushed beneath his dark skin, aware of rudeness. After all, when a lady invites you to her house, it is boorish to ignore the offered hospitality. It is a slight for which one can scarcely apologize. But she evidently bore him no malice.
“It was only natural on my part,” she said amiably. “I shall never forget when poor Flossie died. You remember Flossie, don't you? She used to look so pretty, with her blue bow in her hair, and no one will ever persuade me that she was n't poisoned by the people next door; they were dreadful people. I wish I could remember their name; it was something like Blunks. Anyhow, I was inconsolable, and Mrs. Tawley asked me to stay with her to get over it. I shall never forget how grateful I was. I'm sure you 're looking quite poorly, John,” she added in her inconsequent way. “Let me get you a cup of tea. It will do you good.”
John declined. He wanted to accomplish his errand, but the longer he remained in the company of this lady devoid of the sense of values, the more absurd did that errand seem. A less obstinate man than he would have abandoned it, but John had made up his mind to act on Herold's suggestion, although he mentally bespattered the suggester with varied malediction. He rose and, making his way between the flimsy chairs and tables, stood on the hearth-rug, his hands in his pockets. Unconsciously he scowled at his placid and smiling aunt, who remained seated on the couch, her helpless hands loosely folded on her lap.
“Did you ever hear of a child called Unity Blake?”
“Was that the girl—”
“Yes.”
“What an outlandish name! I often wonder how people come to give such names to children.”
“Never mind her name, my dear aunt,” said John, gruffly. “I want to tell you about her.”
He told her—he told her all he knew. She listened, horror-stricken, regarding him with open mouth and streaming eyes.
“And what do you think is my duty?” asked John, abruptly.
Miss Lindon shook her head. “I 'm sure I don't know what to advise you, dear. I 'll try to find out some kind Christian people who want a servant.”
“I don't want any kind Christian people at all,” said John. “I'm going to make up in ease and happiness for all the wrongs that humanity has inflicted on her. I am going to adopt her, educate her, fill her up with the good things of life.”
“That's very fine of you, John,” said Miss Lindon. “Some people are as fond of their adopted children as of their own. I remember Miss Engleshaw adopted a little child. She was four, if I remember right, and she used to dress her so prettily. I used to go and help her choose frocks. Really they were quite expensive. Now I come to think of it, John, I could help you that way with little Unity. I don't think gentlemen have much experience in choosing little girls' frocks. How old is she?”
“Nearly sixteen,” said John.
“That's rather old,” said Miss Lindon, from whose mind this new interest seemed to have driven the tragic side of the question. “It's a pity you could n't have begun when she was four.”
“It is,” said John.
“Only if you had begun with her at four, you would n't be wanting to adopt her now,” said Miss Lindon, with an illuminating flash of logic.
“Quite so,” replied John.
There was a span of silence. John mechanically drew his pipe from his pocket, eyed it with longing, and replaced it. Miss Lindon took the aged black-and-tan terrier in her arms and whispered to it in baby language. She was a million leagues from divining the object of her nephew's visit. John looked at her despairingly. Had she not a single grain of common sense? At last he strode across the room, a Gulliver in a new Lilliput, and sat down again by her side.
“Look here, 'Aunt Gladys,” he said desperately, “if I adopt a young woman of sixteen, I must have another woman in the house—a lady, one of my own family. I could n't have people saying horrid things about her and me.”
Miss Lindon assented to the proposition. John was far too young and good-looking (“Oh, Lord!” cried John)—yes, he was—to pose as the father of a pretty, grown-up young woman.
“The poor child is n't pretty,” said he.
“It does n't matter,” replied Miss Lindon. “Beauty is only skin deep, and I 've known plain people who are quite fascinating. There was Captain Brownlow's wife—do you remember the Brownlows? Your poor mother was so fond of them—”
“Yes, yes,” said John, impatiently. “He had wet hands, and used to mess my face about when I was a kid. I hated it. The question is, however, whom am I going to get to help me with Unity Blake?”
“Ah, yes, to be sure. Poor little Unity! You must bring her to see me sometimes. Give me notice, and I 'll make her some of my cream-puffs. Children are always so fond of them. You ought to remember my cream-puffs.”
“Good heavens!” he cried, with a gesture that set the dog barking. “There 's no question of cream-puffs. Can't you see what I'm driving at? I want you to come and keep house for me and help me to look after the child.”
He rose, and his great form towered so threateningly over her that Dandy barked at him with a toy terrier's furious and impotent rage.
“I come and live with you?” gasped Miss Lindon.
0094
“Yes,” said John, turning away and lumbering back to the fireplace. The dog, perceiving that he had struck terror into the heart of his enemy, dismissed him with a scornful snarl, and curled himself up by the side of his stupefied mistress.
It was done; the proposal had been made, according to the demands of his pig-headedness. Now that he had made it, he realized its insanity. He contrasted this home of flim-flammeries and its lap-dogs and canaries and old-maidish futilities with his own tobacco-saturated and paper-littered den; this life of trivialities with his own fighting career; this incapacity to grasp essentials with his own realization of the conflict of world-forces. The ludicrous incongruity of a partnership between the two of them in so fateful a business as the healing of a human soul appealed to his somewhat dull sense of humour. The whole idea was preposterous. In his saturnine way he laughed.
“It's rather a mad notion, is n't it?”
“I don't think so at all,” replied Miss Lindon in a most disconcertingly matter-of-fact tone. “The only thing is that since poor papa died I've had so little to do with gentlemen, and have forgotten their ways. You see, dear, you have put me quite in a flutter. How do I know, for instance, what you would like to have for breakfast? Your dear grandpapa used to have only one egg boiled for two minutes—he was most particular—and a piece of dry toast; whereas I well remember Mrs. Brownlow telling me that her husband used to eat a hearty meal of porridge and eggs and bacon, with an underdone beefsteak to follow. So you see, dear, I have no rule which I could follow; you would have to tell me.”
“That's quite a detail,” said John, rather touched by her unselfish, if tangential, dealing with the proposal. “The main point is,” said he, moving a step or two forward, “would you care to come and play propriety for me and this daughter of misery?”
“Do you really want me to?”
“Naturally, since I 've asked you.”
She rose and came up to him. “My dear boy,” she said with wet eyes, “I know I'm not a clever woman, and often when clever people like you talk, I don't in the least understand what they 're talking about; but I did love your dear mother with all my heart, and I would do anything in the wide world for her son.”
John took her hand and looked down into her foolish, kind face, which wore for the moment the dignity of love. “I'm afraid it will mean an uprooting of all your habits,” said he, in a softened voice.
She smiled. “I can bring them with me,” she said cheerfully. “You won't mind Dandy, will you? He'll soon get used to you. And as for Dickie,” she added, with a touch of wistfulness, “I 'm sure I can find a nice home for him.”
John put his arm round her shoulder and gave her the kiss of a shy bear.
“My good soul,” he cried, “bring fifty million Dickies if you like.” He laughed. “There's nothing like the song of birds for the humanizing of the cockney child.”
He looked around and beheld the little, gimcrack room with a new vision. After all, it was as much an expression of her individuality, and as genuine in the eyes of the high gods, as Herold's exquisitely furnished abode was of Herold's, or the untidy jumble of the room in Fenton Square was of his own. And all she had to live upon was a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and no artistic instincts or antecedents whatsoever.
“I feel a brute in asking you to give up this little place now that you've made it so pretty,” he said.
Her face brightened at the praise. “It is pretty, is n't it?” Then she sighed as her eyes rested fondly on her possessions. “I suppose it would be too tiny for us all to live here.”
“I'm afraid it would,” said John. “Besides, we must live in London, on account of my work.”
“In London?”
Miss Lindon's heart sank. She had lived in suburbs all her life, and found Croydon—the Lord knows why—the most delectable of them all. She had sat under Mr. Moneyfeather of Saint Michael's for many years—such a dear, good man who preached such eloquent sermons! You could always understand him, too, which was a great comfort. And the church was just round the corner. In London folks had to go to church by omnibus, a most unpleasant and possibly irreverent prelude to divine worship. Besides, when you did get to the sacred edifice, you found yourself in a confusing land where all the clergy, even to the humblest deacon, were austere and remote strangers, who looked at members of their congregation with glassy and unsympathetic eyes when they passed them in the street. Here, in Croydon, on the contrary, when she met Mr. Moneyfeather in public places, he held her hand and patted it and inquired affectionately after Dandy's health. With a London vicar she could not conceive the possibility of such privileged terms of intimacy. London, where you did not know your next-door neighbor, and where you took no interest in the births of babies over the way; where no one ran in for a gossip in the mornings; where every street was a clashing, dashing High Street.
But though her face pictured her dismay, she was too generous to translate it into words. John never guessed her sacrifice.
“We 'll go somewhere quiet,” said he, after a while.
“We 'll go wherever you like, dear,” replied Miss Lindon, meekly, and she rang the bell for tea.
The main point decided, they proceeded to discuss the details of the scheme, the minds of each suffused in a misty wonder. If John had told the simple lady that she could serve him by taking command of a cavalry regiment, she would have agreed in her unselfish fashion, but she would have been not a whit more perplexed at the prospect. As for John he had the sensation of living in a fantastic dream. A child of six would have been a more practical ally. In the course of befogged conversation, however, it was arranged that Miss Lindon should transfer to the new house her worldly belongings, of which she was to give him an inventory, including Dandy and Dickie and her maid Phoebe, a most respectable girl of Baptist upbringing, who had been cruelly jilted by a prosperous undertaker in the neighborhood, whom, if you had seen him conducting a funeral, you would have thought as serious and God-fearing a man as the clergyman himself; which showed how hypocritical men could be, and how you ought never to trust to appearances. It was also settled that, as soon as Unity could be rescued from the guardianship of the orphanage authorities and comfortably installed in a convalescent home by the seaside, Miss Lindon would journey thither in order to make her ward's acquaintance. In the meanwhile John would go house-hunting.
“Walter Herold will help me,” said John.
“That's your friend who acts, is n't it?” said Miss Lindon. “I have n't any objection to theatres myself. In fact, I often used to go to see Irving when I was young. You meet quite a nice class of people in the dress-circle. But I don't think ladies ought to go on the stage. I hope Mr. Herold won't put such an idea into Unity's head.”
“I don't think he will,” said John.
“Young girls are sometimes so flighty. My old friend Mrs. Willcox had a daughter who went on the stage, and she married an actor, and now has twelve children, and lives in Cheshire. I was hearing about her only the other day. I suppose Unity will have to be taught music and drawing and French like any other young lady.”
“We might begin,” replied John, “with more elementary accomplishments.”
“I could teach her botany,” said Miss Lindon, pensively. “I got first prize for it at school. I still have the book in a cupboard, and I could read it up. And I'm so glad I have kept my two volumes of pressed flowers. It's quite easy to learn, I assure you.”
“I'm afraid, my dear,” said John, “you 'll first have to teach her to eat and drink like a Christian, and blow her nose, and keep her face clean.”
“Ah, that reminds me. My head's in a maze, and I can't think of everything at once, like some clever people. What kind of soap do gentlemen use? I 'll have to know, so as to supply you with what you like.”
“Any old stuff that will make a lather,” said John, rising.
“But some soaps are so bad for the skin,” she objected anxiously.
“Vitriol would n't hurt my rhinoceros hide.”
He laughed, and held out his hand. Further discussion was useless.
Miss Lindon accompanied him to the front gate and watched him stride down the perky terrace until he disappeared round the corner. Then she went slowly into the house and uncovered the canary, who blinked at her in oblique sullenness, and did not respond to her friendly “cheep” and the scratching of her finger against the rails of his cage. She turned to Dandy, who, snoring loud, was equally unresponsive. Feeling lonely and upset, she rang the bell.
“Phoebe,” she said, when the angular and jilted maid appeared, “we are going to keep house for my nephew, Mr. Risca, and a young lady whom he has adopted. Will you tell me one thing? Is the lady of the house supposed to clean the gentlemen's pipes?”
“My father is a non-smoker, as well as a teetotaler, miss,” replied Phoebe.
“Dear me!” murmured Miss Lindon. “It's going to be a great puzzle.”
