Tales of two people

“AT lunch on Friday,” Mrs Pryce resumed, “the steward told us that we were expected to reach Queenstown about one o’clock in the morning, and we all began discussing whether we should sit up. The old travellers scoffed at the idea, and mamma, though she wasn’t an old traveller, said she would never think of being so silly. But I and the two other girls at the table – they were Americans on their first trip over – said that we certainly should, and one of them asked Mr Walsh if he meant to. ‘I must,’ he said, smiling. ‘In fact, I expect to land there – that is, if I get the telegram I expect to get. Of course he glanced at me as he spoke, so that I knew what he meant, though the others hadn’t the least idea. What would they have said?”

“I suppose they did say they were very sorry he wasn’t going on to Liverpool?”

“Yes, and even mamma said how sorry we were to part from him. Fancy mamma saying that! It was fun! Only after lunch she was terribly aggravating; she kept me down in the writing-room all the afternoon, writing letters for her to all sorts of stupid people in America and at home, saying we’d arrived safely. Of course we’d arrived safely! But if mamma so much as crosses the Channel without sinking, she writes to all her friends as if she’d come back from the North Pole. Some people are like that, aren’t they?”

“Yes; and they’re generally considered attentive. You may get a great reputation for good manners by writing unnecessary letters.”

“Yes. So I didn’t see him again till dinner. Nothing much happened then – at least I don’t remember much. The end had begun, I think, and I wasn’t feeling so jolly as I had been all the way across. But everybody else was in high spirits, and he was the gayest of all of us. I expect he saw that I was rather blue, and he followed me on deck soon after dinner, and there we had our last little talk. He told me that he thought everything would be done quite quietly; he meant to tell the purser where to find him in case of inquiry, and to be ready to go ashore at once. He was sure they’d take him ashore; but if by chance they didn’t, he would stay in his cabin, so that, anyhow, this was ‘Good-bye.’ So I said ‘Good-bye’ and wished him good luck. ‘Are you going to sit up?’ he said. I looked at him for a moment and then said ‘No.’ He smiled in an apologetic sort of way and gave that little wave of his hands. ‘It’s foolish of me to care, I suppose, but – thank you for that.’ I was a little surprised, because I really hadn’t thought he would mind me seeing; but I was pleased too. He held out both his hands, and I took them and pressed them. Then I opened my hands and looked at his as they lay there. He was smiling at me with his lips and his eyes. ‘Slim-Fingered Jim!’ he whispered. ‘Don’t quite forget him, little friend.’ ‘I suppose I shall never see you again?’ I said. ‘Better not,’ he told me. ‘But let’s remember this voyage. We’ll put a little fence round it, won’t we? and keep all the rest of life out, and just let this stand by itself – on its own merits. Shall we, dear little friend?’ ”

Mrs Pryce stayed her narrative for a moment. But my curiosity was merciless.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I think I murmured something like ‘Oh, my dear, my dear!’ and then I let go of his hands and turned away to the sea; and when I looked round again, he was gone.”

“And that was the end?”

“No. The end was lying in the berth above mamma, who was sound asleep, and – well, snoring rather – lying there and feeling the ship slowing down and then stopping, and hearing the mail-boat come alongside, and all the noise and the shouting and the bustle. I knew I could hear nothing – there would be nothing to hear – but I couldn’t help listening. I listened very hard all the time, but of course I heard nothing; and at last – after hours and hours, as it seemed – we began to move again. That was the real end. I knew it had happened then; and so it had. He wasn’t at breakfast. But luckily nobody on the ship – none of the passengers, I mean – found out about it till we got to Liverpool; and as mamma and I weren’t going on to London, it didn’t matter.”

“And he got off?”

“Yes, he got off – that time.”

“I’m afraid this great man had one foible,” I observed. “He was proud of those hands! Well, Cæsar didn’t like getting bald, so I learnt at school.”

“I always remember them as they lay in mine,” she said. “His hands and his eyes – that’s what I remember.”

“Ever seen him again?”

“Of course not.” She sat where she was for a moment longer, then rose. “Shall we go in?”

“I think we may as well,” said I.

So we went into the billiard-room. They were still playing pool. I made for the whisky-and-soda and mixed myself a tumbler and drank thereof. When I set the tumbler down and turned round to the table Charlie Pryce was engaged in making a shot of critical importance. Everybody was looking at him. His wife was standing at the end of the table and looking at him too. She seemed as much interested in the shot as any of them. But was she? For before he played she raised her eyes and looked across at me with a queer little smile. I couldn’t help returning it. I knew what she was thinking. The billiard-table is a high trial.

When Charlie had brought off his shot – which he did triumphantly – his wife came and kissed him. This pleased him very much. He did not recognise the Kiss Penitential, which is, however, a well-ascertained variety.

I’m afraid that the magnetic current of immorality which seemed to emanate from Mr James Painter Walsh passed through the sympathetic medium of Mrs Pryce’s memory and infected, in some small degree, my more hardened intellect; for even now I can’t help hoping that Slim-Fingered Jim is being put to some light form of labour. But it’s a difficult business! Even the laundry – a most coveted department, as I am given to understand – would spoil them hopelessly.

THE GREY FROCK

THE rights and wrongs of the matter are perhaps a little obscure, and it is possible to take his side as well as hers. Or perhaps there is really no question of sides at all – no need to condemn anybody; only another instance of the difficulty people have in understanding one another’s point of view. But here, with a few lines added by way of introduction, are the facts as related in her obviously candid and sincere narrative.

Miss Winifred Petheram’s father had an income from landed estate of about five thousand a year, and spent, say, six or thereabouts; his manor house was old and beautiful, the gardens delightful, the stables handsome and handsomely maintained, the housekeeping liberal, hospitable, almost lavish. Mr Petheram had three sons and four daughters; but the sons were still young, and not the cause of any great expense. Mrs Petheram was a quiet body, the two girls in the schoolroom were no serious matter; in fact, apart from the horses, Mildred and Winifred were, in a pecuniary point of view, the most serious burden on the family purse. For both were pretty girls, gay and fond of society, given to paying frequent visits in town and country, and in consequence needing many frocks and a considerable supply of downright hard cash. But everybody was very comfortable; only it was understood that at a period generally referred to as “some day” there would be very little for anybody except the eldest son. “Some day,” meant, of course, when Mr Petheram reluctantly died, and thereby brought his family into less favourable worldly circumstances.

From this brief summary of the family’s position the duty of Mildred and Winifred (and, in due course of time, of the two girls in the schoolroom also) stands forth salient and unmistakable. Mildred performed it promptly at the age of nineteen years. He was the second son of a baronet, and his elder brother was sickly and unmarried; but, like a wise young man, he took no chances, went on the Stock Exchange, and became exceedingly well-to-do in an exceedingly brief space of time – something, in fact, “came off” in South Africa, and when that happens ordinary limits of time and probability are suspended. So with Mildred all was very well; and it was odds that one of the boys would be provided for by his brother-in-law. Winifred had just as good chances – nay, better; for her sensitive face and wondering eyes had an attraction that Mildred’s self-possessed good looks could not exert. But Winifred shilly-shallied (it was her father’s confidential after-dinner word) till she was twenty-one, then refused Sir Barton Amesbury (in itself a step of doubtful sanity, as was generally observed), and engaged herself to Harold Jackson, who made two hundred a year and had no prospects except the doubtful one of maintaining his income at that level – unless, that is, he turned out a genius, when it was even betting whether a mansion or the workhouse awaited him; for that depends on the variety of genius. Having taken this amazing course, Winifred was resolute and radiantly happy; her relatives, after the necessary amount of argument, shrugged their shoulders – the very inadequate ultima ratio to which a softening civilisation seems to have reduced relatives in such cases.

“I can manage two hundred a year for her while I live,” said Mr Petheram, wiping his brow and then dusting his boots; he was just back from his ride. “After that – ”

“The insurance, my dear?” Mrs Petheram suggested. But her husband shook his head; that little discrepancy above noted, between five and six thousand a year, had before this caused the insurance to be a very badly broken reed.

Harold Jackson – for in him the explanation of Winifred’s action must be sought – was tall, good-looking, ready of speech, and decidedly agreeable. There was no aggressiveness about him, and his quiet manners repelled any suspicion of bumptiousness. But it cannot be denied that to him Winifred’s action did not seem extraordinary; he himself accounted for this by saying that she, like himself, was an Idealist, the boys by saying that he was “stuck-up,” Mr Petheram by a fretful exclamation that in all worldly matters he was as blind as a new-born puppy. Whatever the truth of these respective theories, he was as convinced that Winifred had chosen for her own happiness as that she had given him his. And in this she most fully agreed. Of course, then, all the shrugging of shoulders in the universe could not affect the radiant contentment of the lovers, nor could it avert the swift passage of months which soon brought the wedding-day in sight, and made preparations for it urgent and indispensable.

Married couples, even though they have only a precarious four hundred a year, must live somewhere – no idealism is independent of a roof; on the contrary, it centres round the home, so Harold said, and the word “home” seemed already sacred to Winifred as her glance answered his. It was the happiest day of her life when she put on her dainty new costume of delicate grey, took her parasol and gloves, matched to a shade with her gown, and mounted into the smart dog-cart which Jennie, the new chestnut mare, was to draw to the station. A letter had come from Harold to say that, after long search, he had found a house which would suit them, and was only just a trifle more expensive than the maximum sum they had decided to give for rent. Winifred knew that the delicate grey became her well, and that Harold would think her looking very pretty; and she was going to see her home and his. Her face was bright as she kissed her father and jumped down from the dog-cart; but he sighed when she had left him, and his brow was wrinkled as he drove Jennie back. He felt himself growing rather old; “some day” did not seem quite as remote as it used, and pretty Winnie – well, there was no use in crying over it now. Wilful girls must have their way; and it was not his fault that confounded agitators had played the deuce with the landed interest. The matter passed from his thoughts as he began to notice how satisfactorily Jennie moved.

Winifred’s lover met her in London, and found her eyes still bright from the reveries of her journey. To-day was a gala day – they drove off in a hansom to a smart restaurant in Piccadilly, joking about their extravagance. Everything was perfect to Winifred, except (a small exception, surely!) that Harold failed to praise, seemed almost not to notice, the grey costume; it must have been that he looked at her face only!

“It’s not a large house, you know,” he said at lunch, smiling at her over a glass of Graves.

“Well, I sha’n’t be wanting to get away from you,” she answered, smiling. “Not very far, Harold!”

“Are your people still abusing me?”

He put the question with a laugh.

“They never abused you, only me.” Then came the irrepressible question: “Do you like my new frock? I put it on on purpose – for the house, you know.”

“Our home!” he murmured, rather sentimentally, it must be confessed. The question about the frock he did not answer; he was thinking of the home. Winifred was momentarily grateful to a stout lady at the next table, who put up her glass, looked at the frock, and with a nod of approval called her companion’s attention to it. This was while Harold paid the bill.

Then they took another cab, and headed north – through Berkeley Square, where Winifred would have liked, but did not expect, to stop, and so up to Oxford Street. Here they bore considerably to the east, then plunged north again and drove through one or two long streets. Harold, who had made the journey before, paid no heed to the route, but talked freely of delightful hours which they were to enjoy together, of books to read and thoughts to think, and of an intimate sympathy which, near as they were already to one another, the home and the home life alone could enable them fully to realise. Winifred listened; but far down in her mind now was another question, hardly easier to stifle than that about the frock. “Where are we going to?” would have been its naked form; but she yielded no more to her impulse than to look about her and mark and wonder. At last they turned by a sharp twist from a long narrow street into a short narrower street, where a waggon by the curbstone forced the cab to a walk, and shrill boys were playing an unintelligible noisy game.

“What queer places we pass through!” she cried with a laugh, as she laid her hand on his arm and turned her face to his.

“Pass through! We’re at home,” he answered, returning her laugh. “At home, Winnie!” He pointed at a house on the right-hand side, and, immediately after, the cab stopped. Winifred got out, holding her skirt back from contact with the wheel. Harold, in his eagerness to ring the door bell, had forgotten to render her this service. She stood on the pavement for a moment looking about her. One of the boys cried: “Crikey, there’s a swell!” and she liked the boy for it. Then she turned to the house.

“It wants a lick of paint,” said Harold cheerfully, as he rang the bell again.

“It certainly does,” she admitted, looking up at the dirty walls.

An old woman opened the door; she might be said, by way of metaphor, to need the same process as the walls; a very narrow passage was disclosed behind her.

“Welcome!” said Harold, giving Winifred his hand and then presenting her to the old woman. “This is my future wife,” he explained. “We’ve come to look at the house. But we won’t bother you, Mrs Blidgett, we’d rather run over it by ourselves. We shall enjoy that, sha’n’t we, Winnie?”

Winnie’s answer was a little scream and a hasty clutch at her gown; a pail of dirty water, standing in the passage, had threatened ruin; she recoiled violently from this peril against the opposite wall and drew away again, silently exhibiting a long trail of dark dust on her new grey frock. Harold laughed as he led the way into a small square room that opened from the passage.

“That’s the parlour,” said the old woman, wiping her arms with her apron. “You can find your way upstairs; nothing’s locked.” And with this remark she withdrew by a steep staircase leading underground.

“She’s the caretaker,” Harold explained.

“She doesn’t seem to have taken much care,” observed Winifred, still indignant about her gown and holding it round her as closely as drapery clings to an antique statue.

Miss Petheram’s account of the house, its actual dimensions, accommodation, and characteristics, has always been very vague, and since she refused information as to its number in the street, verification of these details has remained impossible. Perhaps it was a reasonably capacious, although doubtless not extensive, dwelling; perhaps, again, it was a confined and well-nigh stifling den. She remembered two things – first, its all-pervading dirt; secondly, the remarkable quality which (as she alleged) distinguished its atmosphere. She thought there were seven “enclosures,” this term being arrived at (after discussion) as a compromise between “rooms” and “pens”; and she knew that the windows of each of these enclosures were commanded by the windows of several other apparently similar and very neighbouring enclosures. Beyond this she could give no account of her first half-hour in the house; her exact recollection began when she was left alone in the enclosure on the first floor, which Harold asserted to be the drawing-room, Harold himself having gone downstairs to seek the old woman and elicit from her some information as to what were and what were not tenant’s fixtures in the said enclosure. “You can look about you,” he remarked cheerfully, as he left her, “and make up your mind where you’re going to have your favourite seat. Then you shall tell me, and I shall have the picture of you sitting there in my mind.” He pointed to a wooden chair, the only one then in the room. “Experiment with that chair,” he added, laughing. “I won’t be long, darling.”

Mechanically, without considering things which she obviously ought to have considered, Winifred sank into the designated seat, laid her parasol on a small table, and leant her elbows on the same piece of furniture as she held her face between her gloved hands. The atmosphere again asserted its peculiar quality; she rose for a moment and opened the window; fresh air was gained at the expense of spoilt gloves, and was weighted with the drawbacks of a baby’s cries and an inquisitive woman’s stare from over the way. Shutting the window again, she returned to her chair – the symbol of what was to be her favourite seat in days to come, her chosen corner in the house which had been the subject of so many talks and so many dreams. There were a great many flies in the room; the noise of adjacent humanity in street and houses was miscellaneous and penetrating; the air was very close. And this house was rather more expensive than their calculations had allowed. They had immensely enjoyed making those calculations down there in the country, under the old yew hedge and in sight of the flower beds beneath the library window. She remembered the day they did it. There was a cricket match in the meadow. Mildred and her husband brought the drag over, and Sir Barton came in his tandem. It was almost too hot in the sun, but simply delightful in the shade. She and Harold had had great fun over mapping out their four hundred a year and proving how much might be done with it – at least compared with anything they could want when once they had the great thing that they wanted.

The vision vanished; she was back in the dirty little room again; she caught up her parasol; a streak across the dust marked where it had lain on the table; she sprang up and twisted her frock round, craning her neck back; ah, that she had reconnoitred that chair! She looked at her gloves; then with a cry of horror she dived for her handkerchief, put it to her lips, and scrubbed her cheeks; the handkerchief came away soiled, dingy, almost black. This last outrage overcame her; the parasol dropped on the floor, she rested her arms on the table and laid her face on them, and she burst into sobs, just as she used to in childhood when her brothers crumpled a clean frock or somebody spoke to her roughly. And between her sobs she cried, almost loudly, very bitterly: “Oh, it’s too mean and dirty and horrid!”

Harold had stolen softly upstairs, meaning to surprise the girl he loved, perhaps to let a snatched kiss be her first knowledge of his return. He flushed red, and his lips set sternly; he walked across the room to her with a heavy tread. She looked up, saw him, and knew that her exclamation had been overheard.