Then if he don't go and tie me down to a price for to make good front wall and all dy-lapidations. And onlest he says wot he means by good, who's to know?... Mortar, John!" John supplied mortar with a slamp--a sound like the fall of a pasty Titan on loose boards. The grievance was resumed, but with a consolation. "Got 'im there, accordin' as I think of it! Wot's his idear of _good?_--that's wot _I_ want to know. Things is as you see 'em...." Mr. Bartlett would have said the _esse_ of things was _percipi,_ had he been a Philosopher, and would have felt as if he knew something. Not being one, he subsided--with truisms--into silence, content with the weakness of Sapps owner's entrenchments.
Mr. Bartlett completed his contract, according to his interpretation of the word "good"; and it seems to have passed muster, and been settled for on the nail. Which meant, in this case, as soon as a surveyor had condemned it on inspection, and accepted a guinea from Mr. Bartlett to overlook its shortcomings; two operations which, taken jointly, constituted a survey, and were paid for on another nail later. The new bit of brickwork didn't look any so bad, to the eye of impartiality, now it was pointed up; only it would have looked a lot better--mind you!--if Mr. Bartlett had been allowed to do a bit more pointing up on the surrounding brickwork afore he struck his scaffold. But Sapps landlord was a narrer-minded party--a Conservative party--who wouldn't go to a sixpence more than he was drove, though an economy in the long-run. The remarks of the Court and its friends are embodied in these statements, made after Mr. Bartlett had got his traps away on a truck, which couldn't come down the Court by reason of the jam. It was, however, a source of satisfaction to Dave Wardle, whose friends climbed into it while he sat on the handle, outweighing him and lifting him into the air. Only, of course, this joy lasted no longer than till they started loading of it up.
It lasted long enough, for all that, to give quite a turn to Mrs.
Tapping, whom you may remember as a witness of Dave's accident--the bad one--nine months ago. Ever since then--if Mrs. Riley, to whom she addressed her remarks, would believe her--Mrs. Tapping's heart had been in her mouth whenever she had lighted her eye on young children a-playing in the gutters. As children were plentiful, and preferred playing wherever the chances of being run over seemed greatest, this must have been a tax on Mrs. Tapping's constitution. She had, however, borne up wonderfully, showing no sign of loss of flesh; nor could her flowing hair have been thinned--to judge by the tubular curls that flanked her brows, which were neither blinkers nor cornucopias precisely; but which, opened like a scroll, would have resembled the one; and, spirally prolonged, the other. It was the careful culture of these which distracted the nose of Mrs. Tapping's _monde_, preoccupied by a flavour of chandled tallow, to a halo of pomatum. Mrs. Riley was also unchanged; she, however, had no alarming cardiac symptoms to record.
But as to that turn Dave Wardle giv' Mrs. Tapping. It really sent your flesh through your bones, all on edge like, to see a child fly up in the air like that. So she testified, embellishing her other physiological experience with a new horror unknown to Pathologists. Mrs. Riley, less impressionable, kept an even mind in view of the natural invulnerability of childhood and the special guardianship of Divine Omnipotence. If these two between them could not secure small boys of seven or eight from disaster, what could? The unbiassed observer--if he had been passing at the time--might have thought that Dave's chubby but vigorous handgrip and his legs curled tight round the truck-handle were the immediate and visible reasons why he was not shot across the truck into space. Anyhow, he held on quite tight, shouting loudly the next item of the programme--"Now all the other boys to jump out when oy comes to free. One, two, _free_!" In view of the risk of broken bones the other boys were prompt, and Dave came down triumphantly. Mrs. Riley's confidence had been well founded.
"Ye'll always be too thinder-harruted about the young spalpeens, me dyurr," she said. "Thrust them to kape their skins safe! Was not me son Phalim all as bad or wurruss. And now to say his family of childher!"
Mrs. Tapping perceived her opportunity, and jumped at it. "That is the truth, ma'am, what you say, and calls to mind the very words my poor husband used frequent. So frequent, you might say, that as often as not they was never out of his mouth. 'Mary Ann Tapping, you are too tender-hearted for to carry on at all; bein', as we are, subjick.' And I says back to him: 'Tapping'--I says--'no more than my duty as a Christian woman should. Read your Bible and you will find,' I says. And Tapping he would say:--'Right you are, Mary Ann, and viewin' all things as a Gospel dispensation. But what I look at, Mary Ann'--he says--'is the effect on your system. You are that 'igh-strung and delicate organized that what is no account to an 'arder fibre tells. So bear in mind what I say, Mary Ann Tapping'--he says--'and crost across the way like the Good Samaritan, keepin' in view that nowadays whatever we are we are no longer Heathens, and cases receive attention from properly constitooted Authorities, or are took in at the Infirmary.' Referring, Mrs. Riley, ma'am, to an Italian organ-boy bit by his own monkey, which though small was vicious, and open to suspicion of poison...." Mrs.
Tapping dwelt upon her past experience and her meritorious attitude in trying circumstances, for some time. As, in this instance, she had offered refreshment to the victim, which had been requisitioned by his monkey, who escaped and gave way to his appetite on the top of a street-lamp, but was recaptured when the lamplighter came with his ladder.
"Shure there'll be nothing lift of the barrow soon barring the bare fragmints of it," said Mrs. Riley, who had been giving more attention to the boys and the truck than to the Italian and the monkey. And really the repetition of the pleasing performance with the handle pointed to gradual disintegration of Mr. Bartlett's property.
However, salvage was at hand. A herald of Mr. Bartlett himself, or of his representatives, protruded slowly from Sapps archway, announcing that his scaffold-poles were going back to the sphere from which they had emanated on hire. It came slowly, and gave a margin for a stampede of Dave and his accomplices, leaving the truck very much aslant with the handle in the air; whereas we all know that a respectable hand-barrer, that has trusted its owner out of sight, awaits his return with the quiet confidence of horizontality; or at least with the handle on the ground. Mr. Bartlett's comment was that nowadays it warn't safe to take one's eyes off of anything for half-a-quarter of a minute, and there would have to be something done about it. He who analyses this remark may find it hard to account for its having been so intelligible at first hearing.
But Mrs. Tapping and Mrs. Riley--who were present--were not analytical, and when Mr. Bartlett inquired suspiciously if any of them boys belonged to either of you ladies, one of the latter replied with a counter-inquiry:--"What harrum have the young boys done ye, thin, misther? Shure it's been a playzin' little enjoyment forr thim afther school-hours!" Which revealed the worst part of Mr. Bartlett's character and his satellite John's, a sullen spirit of revenge, more marked perhaps in the man than in the master; for while the former merely referred to the fact that he would know them again if he saw them, and would then give them something to recollect him by, the latter said he would half-skin some of 'em alive if he could just lay hands on 'em. But the subject dropped, and Mr. Bartlett loaded up his truck and departed.
And was presently in collision with the authorities for leaving it standing outside the Wheatsheaf, while he and John consumed a half-a-pint in at the bar.
When the coast was quite clear, the offenders felt their way back, not disguising their satisfaction at their transgression. Mrs. Riley seemed to think that she ought to express the feeling the Bench would have had, had it been present. For she said: "You'll be laying yoursilves open to pinalties, me boys, if ye don't kape your hands off other payple's thrucks, and things that don't consurrun ye. So lave thim be, and attind to your schooling, till you're riddy for bid." Dave's blue eyes dwelt doubtfully on the speaker, expressing their owner's uncertainty whether she was in earnest or not. Indeed, her sympathy with the offenders disqualified her for judicial impressiveness. Anyhow, Dave remained unimpressed, to judge by his voice as he vanished down the Court to narrate this pleasant experience to Uncle Moses. It was on Saturday afternoon that this took place. Have you ever noticed the strange fatality which winds up all building jobs on Saturday? Only not _this_ Saturday--always next Saturday. It is called by some "making a clean finish."
Old Mrs. Prichard lent herself to the fiction that she would rejoice when the builders had made this clean finish. But she only did so to meet expectation half-way. She had no such eagerness for a quiet Sunday as was imputed to her. Very old people, with hearing at a low ebb, are often like this. The old lady during the ten days Mr. Bartlett had contrived to extend his job over--for his contract left all question of extras open--had become accustomed to the sound of the men outside, and was sorry when they died away in the distance, after breeding dissension with poles in the middle distance; that is to say, the Court below. She had felt alive to the proximity of human creatures; for Mr. Bartlett and John still came under that designation, though builders by trade. If it had not been Saturday, with a prospect of Dave and Dolly Wardle when they had done their dinners, she would have had no alleviation in view, and would have had to divide the time between knitting and dozing till Mrs. Burr came in--as she might or might not--and tea eventuated: the vital moment of her day.
However, this was Saturday, and Dave and Dolly came up in full force as the afternoon mellowed; and Aunt M'riar accompanied them, and Mrs. Burr she got back early off her job, and there was fourpennyworth of crumpets. Only that was three-quarters of an hour later.
But Dave was eloquent about his adventure with the truck, judging the old lady of over eighty quite a fit and qualified person to sympathize with the raptures of sitting on a handle, and being jerked violently into the air by a counterpoise of confederates. And no doubt she was; but not to the extent imputed to her by Dave, of a great sense of privation from inability to go through the experience herself.
Nevertheless there was that in his blue eyes, and the disjointed rapidity of his exposition of his own satisfaction, that could bridge for her the gulf of two-thirds of a century between the sad old now--the vanishing time--and the merry _then_ of a growing life, and all the wonder of the things to be. The dim illumination of her smile spread a little to her eyes as she made believe to enter into the glorious details of the exploit; though indeed she was far from clear about many of them. And as for Dave, no suspicion crossed his mind that the old lady's professions of regret were feigned. He condemned Aunt M'riar's attitude, as that of an interloper between two kindred souls.
"There, child, that'll do for about Mr. Bartlett's truct." So the good woman had said, showing her lack of _geist_--her Philistinism. "Now you go and play at The Hospital with Dolly, and don't make no more noise than you can help." This referred to a game very popular with the children since Dave's experience as a patient. It promised soon to be the only record of his injuries, as witness his gymnastics of this morning.
But he was getting to be such a big boy now--seven, last birthday--that playing at games was becoming a mere concession to Dolly's tender youth.
Old Mrs. Prichard's thin soprano had an appeal to this effect in it--on Dave's behalf--as she said: "Oh, but the dear child may tell me, please, all about the truck and some more things, too, before he goes to play with Dolly. He has always such a many things to tell, has this little man! Hasn't he now, Mrs. Wardle?"
Aunt M'riar--good woman as she was--had a vice. She always would improve occasions. This time she must needs say:--"There, Davy, now! Hear what Mrs. Prichard says--so kind! You tell Mrs. Prichard all about Mrs.
Marrowbone and the bull in the duckpond. You tell her!"
Dave, with absolute belief in the boon he was conferring on his venerable hearer, started at once on a complicated statement, as one who accepted the instruction in the spirit in which it was given. But first he had to correct a misapprehension. "The bool wasn't in the duckpong.
The bool was in Farmer Jones's field, and the field was in the duckpong on the other side. And the dusk was in the pong where there wasn't no green." Evidently an oasis of black juice in the weed, which ducks enjoy. Dave thought no explanation necessary, and went on:--"Then Farmer Jones he was a horseback, and he rodid acrost the field, he did. And he undooed the gate with his whip to go froo, and it stumbled and let the bool froo, and Farmer Jones he rodid off to get the boy that understoodid the bool. He fetched him back behind his saddle, he did.
And then the boy he got the bool's nose under control, and leaded him back easy, and they shet to the gate." One or two words--"control," for instance--treasured as essential and conscientiously repeated, gave Dave some trouble; but he got through them triumphantly.
"Is that all the story, Dave?" said Mrs. Prichard, who was affecting deep interest; although it was by now painfully evident that Dave had involved himself in a narrative without much plot. He nodded decisively to convey that it was substantially complete, but added to round it off:--"Mr. Marrowbone the Smith from Crincham he come next day and mended up the gate, only the bool he was tied to a post, and the boy whistled him a tune, or he would have tostid Mr. Marrowbone the Smith."
Said Aunt M'riar irrelevantly:--"What was the tune he whistled, Dave?
You tell Mrs. Prichard what tune it was he whistled!" To which Dave answered with reserve:--"A long tune." Probably the whistler's stock was limited, and he repeated the piece, whatever it was, _da capo ad libitum_. This legend--the thin plot of Dave's story--will not strike some who have the misfortune to own bulls as strange. In some parts of the country boys are always requisitioned to attend on bulls, who especially hate men, perhaps resenting their monopoly of the term _manhood_.
This conversation would scarcely have called for record but for what it led to.
Old Mrs. Prichard, like Aunt M'riar, had a vice. It was jealousy. Her eighty years' experience of a bitter world had left her--for all that she would sit quiet for hours and say never a word--still longing for the music of the tide that had gone out for her for ever. The love of this little man--which had not yet learned its value, and was at the service of age and youth alike--was to her even as a return of the sea-waves to some unhappy mollusc left stranded to dry at leisure in the sun. But her heart was in a certain sense athirst for the monopoly of his blue eyes. She did not grudge him to any legitimate claimant--to Uncle Mo or to Aunt M'riar, nor even to Mrs. Burr; though that good woman scarcely challenged jealousy. Indeed, Mrs. Burr regarded Dave and Dolly as mere cake-consumers--a public hungering for sweet-stuffs, and only to be bought off by occasional concessions. It was otherwise with unknown objects of Dave's affection, whose claims on him resembled Mrs.
Prichard's own. Especially the old grandmother at the Convalescent Home, or whatever it was, where the child had recovered from his terrible accident. She grudged old Mrs. Marrowbone her place in Dave's affections, and naturally lost no opportunity of probing into and analysing them.
Said the old lady to Dave, when the bull was disposed of: "Was Mr.
Marrowbone the Smith old Mrs. Marrowbone's grandson?" Dave shook his head rather solemnly and regretfully. It is always pleasanter to say _yes_ than _no_; but in this case Truth was compulsory. "He wasn't _anyfink_ of Granny Marrowbone's. No, he wasn't!" said he, and continued shaking his head to rub the fact in.
"Now you're making of it up, Dave," said Aunt M'riar. "You be a good little boy, and say Mr. Marrowbone the Smith was old Mrs. Marrowbone's grandson. Because you know he was--now don't you, Davy? You tell Mrs.
Prichard he was old Mrs. Marrowbone's grandson!" Dave, however, shook his head obdurately. No concession!
"Perhaps he was her son," said Mrs. Prichard. But this surmise only prolonged the headshake; which promised to become chronic, to pause only when some ground of agreement could be discovered.
"The child don't above half know what he's talking about, not to say _know_!" Thus Aunt M'riar in a semi-aside to the old lady. It was gratuitous insult to add:--"He don't reely know what's a grandson, ma'am."
Dave's blue eyes flashed indignation. "Yorse I _does_ know!" cried he, loud enough to lay himself open to remonstrance. He continued under due restraint:--"I'm going to be old Mrs. Marrowbone's grangson." He then remembered that the treaty was conditional, and added a proviso:--"So long as I'm a good boy!"
"Won't you be my grandson, too, Davy darling?" said old Mrs. Prichard.
And, if you can conceive it, there was pain in her voice--real pain--as well as the treble of old age. She was jealous, you see; jealous of this old Mrs. Marrowbone, who seemed to come between her and her little new-found waterspring in the desert.
But Dave was embarrassed, and she took his embarrassment for reluctance to grant her the same status as old Mrs. Marrowbone. It was nothing of the sort. It was merely his doubt whether such an arrangement would be permissible under canon law. It was bigamy, however much you chose to prevaricate. The old lady's appealing voice racked Dave's feelings. "I carn't!" he exclaimed, harrowed. "I've spromussed to be Mrs.
Marrowbone's grangson--I have." And thereupon old Mrs. Prichard, perceiving that he was really distressed, hastened to set his mind at ease. Of course he couldn't be her grandson, if he was already Mrs.
Marrowbone's. She overlooked or ignored the possible compromise offered by the fact that two grandmothers are the common lot of all mankind. But it would be unjust--this was clear to her--that Dave should suffer in any way from her jealous disposition. So she put her little grievance away in her inmost heart--where indeed there was scarcely room for it, so preoccupied had the places been--and then, as an active step towards forgetting it, went on to talk to Dave about old Mrs. Marrowbone, although she was not Mr. Marrowbone the Smith's grandmother.
"Tell us, Dave dear, about old Mrs. Marrowbone. Is she very old? Is she as old as me?" To which Aunt M'riar as a sort of Greek chorus added:--"There, Davy, now, you be a good boy, and tell how old Mrs.
Marrowbone is."
Dave considered. "She's not the soyme oyge," said he. "She can walk to chutch and back, Sunday morning." But this was a judgment from physical vigour, possibly a fallible guide. Dave, being prompted, attempted description. Old Mrs. Marrowbone's hair was the only point he could seize on. A cat, asleep on the hearthrug, supplied a standard of comparison. "Granny Marrowbone's head's the colour of this," said Dave, with decision, selecting a pale grey stripe. And Widow Thrale's was like that--one with a deeper tone of brown, with scarcely any perceptible grey.
"And which on Pussy is most like mine, Dave?" said Mrs. Prichard. There was no hesitation in the answer to this. It was "that sort";--that is, the colour of Pussy's stomach, unequivocal white. And which did Dave like best--an unfair question which deserved and got a Parliamentary answer. "All free," said Dave.
But this was merely colour of hair, a superficial distinction. How about Granny Marrowbone's nose. "It's the soyme soyze," was the verdict, given without hesitation. What colour were her eyes? "Soyme as yours." But Dave was destined to incur public censure--Aunt M'riar representing the public--for a private adventure into description. "She's more teef than you," said he candidly.
"Well, now, I do declare if ever any little boy was so rude! I never did! Whatever your Uncle Moses would say if he was told, I can't think."
Thus Aunt M'riar. But her attitude was artificial, for appearance sake, and she knew perfectly well that Uncle Moses would only laugh and encourage the boy. The culprit did not seem impressed, though ready to make concessions. Yet he did not really better matters by saying:--"She's got some teef, she has"; leaving it to be inferred that old Mrs. Prichard had none, which was very nearly true. The old lady did not seem the least hurt. Nor was she hurt even when Dave--seeking merely to supply accurate detail--added, in connection with the old hand that wandered caressingly over his locks and brows:--"Her hands is thicker than yours is, a lot!"
"I often think, Mrs. Wardle," said she, taking no advantage of the new topic offered, "what we might be spared if only our teeth was less untrustworthy. Mine stood me out till over fifty, and since then they've been going--going. Never was two such rows of teeth as I took with me to the Colony. Over fifty years ago, Mrs. Wardle!"
"To think of that!" said Aunt M'riar. It was the time--not the teeth--that seemed so wonderful. Naturally old Mrs. Prichard's teeth went with her. But fifty years! And their owner quite bright still, when once she got talking.
She was more talkative than usual this afternoon, and continued:--"No, I do not believe, Mrs. Wardle, there was ever a girl with suchlike teeth as mine were then." And then this memory brought back its companion memory of the long past, but with no new sadness to her voice: "Only my dear sister Phoebe's, Mrs. Wardle, I've told you about. She was my twin sister ... I've told you ... you recollect?..."
"Yes, indeed, ma'am, and died when you was in the Colony!"
"I've never seen another more beautiful than Phoebe." She spoke with such supreme unconsciousness of the twinship that Aunt M'riar forgot it, too, until her next words came. "I was never free to say it of her in those days, for they would have made sport of me for saying it. There was none could tell us apart then. It does not matter now." She seemed to fall away into an absent-minded dream, always caressing Dave's sunny locks, which wanted cutting.
Aunt M'riar did not instantly perceive why a twin could not praise her twin's beauty; at least, it needed reflection. She was clear on the point, however, by the time Dave, merely watchful till now, suddenly asked a question:--"What are stwins?" He had long been anxious for enlightenment on this point, and now saw his opportunity. His inquiry was checked--if his curiosity was not satisfied--by a statement that when a little boy had a brother the same age that was twins, incorrectly _s_twins. He had to affect satisfaction.
The old woman, roused by Dave's question, attested the general truth of his informant's statements; then went back to the memory of her sister.
"But I never saw her again," said she.
"No, ma'am," said Aunt M'riar. "So I understood. It was in England she died?"