"Well!" said Mr. Pellew, tacitly admitting the implied impeachment. "It _is_ rather a jolly shame, when you come to think of it. I'll take it round to him to-morrow. Gloucester Place, is it--or York Place--end of Baker Street?... Can't remember the fillah's name to save my life.
Married a Miss Bergstein--rich bankers. Got his card at home, I expect.
However, that's where he lives--York Place. He's a Sir Somebody Something.... What were you going to say?"
"Oh--nothing.... Only that it would have been very interesting to read that account. However, Sir Somebody Something must be wanting his _Quarterly Review_.... Never mind!"
Gwen said:--"What nonsense! He's bought another copy by this time. He can afford it, if he's married a Miss Bergstein. Bring it round to-morrow, Percy, to keep Aunt Constance quiet. We shan't take her with us to see Clo's little boy. We should make too many." Then, in order to minimise his visit next day, Mr. Pellew sketched a brief halt in Cavendish Square at half-past three precisely to-morrow afternoon, when Miss Dickenson could "run her eye" through the disintegration of that Egyptian King, without interfering materially with its subsequent delivery at Sir Somebody Something's. It was an elaborate piece of humbug, welcomed with perfect gravity as the solution of a perplexing and difficult problem. Which being so happily solved, Mr. Pellew could take his leave, and did so.
"Didn't I do that capitally, Clo?"
"Do which, dear?"
"Why--making her stop here to see him. Or giving her leave to stop; it's the same thing, only she would rather do it against her will. I mean saying we should make too many at Scraps Court, or whatever it is."
"Oh yes--quite a stroke of genius! Gwen dear, what an inveterate matchmaker you are!"
"Nonsense, Clo! I never...." Here Gwen hung fire for a moment, confronted by an intractability of language. She took the position by storm, _more suo_:--"I never _mutchmoke_ in my life.... What?--Well, you may laugh, Clo, but I never _did_! Only when two fools irritate one by not flying into each other's arms, and wanting to all the time.... Oh, it's exasperating, and I've no patience!"
"You are quite sure they do ... want to?"
"Oh yes--I think so. At least, I'm quite sure Percy does."
"Why not Aunt Constance?"
"Because I can't imagine anyone wanting to rush into any of my cousins'
arms--my he-cousins. It's a peculiarity of cousins, I suppose. If any of mine had been palatable, he would have caught on, and it would have come off. Because they all want _me_, always."
"That's an old story, Gwen dear." The two ladies looked ruefully at one another, with a slight shoulder-shrug apiece over a hopeless case. Then Miss Grahame said:--"Then you consider Constance Dickenson is still palatable?" She laughed on the word a little--a sort of protest. "At nearly forty?"
"Oh dear, yes! Not that she's forty, nor anything like it. She's thirty-six. Besides, it has nothing to do with age. Or very little.
Why--how old is that dear old lady at Chorlton that was jealous of your little boy's old woman in London?"
"Old Goody Marrable? Over eighty. But the other old lady is older still, and Dave speaks well of her, anyhow! We shall see her to-morrow. We must insist on that."
"Well--I could kiss old Goody Marrable. I should be sorry for her bones, of course. But they're not her fault, after all! She's quite an old darling. I hope Aunt Connie and Percy will manage a little common sense to-morrow. They'll have the house to themselves, anyhow. Ta bye-bye, Chloe dear!"
Miss Grahame looked in on her way to her own room to see that Miss Dickenson had been provided with all the accessories of a good night--a margin of pillows and blankets _a choix_, and so on. Hot-water-bottle time had scarcely come yet, but hospitality might refer to it. There was, however, a word to say touching the evening just ended. What did Miss Grahame think of Gwen? Aunt Constance's _parti pris_ in life was a benevolent interest in the affairs of everybody else.
Miss Grahame thought Gwen was all right. The amount of nonsense she had talked to-night showed she was a little excited. A sort of ostentatious absurdity, like a spoiled child! Well--she has been a spoiled child. But she--the speaker--always had believed, did still believe, that Gwen was a fine character underneath, and that all her nonsense was on the surface.
"Will she hold to it, do you think?"
"How can I tell? I should say yes. But one never knows. She's writing him a long letter now. She's in the next room to me, and I heard her scratching five minutes after she said good-night. I hope she won't scribble all night and keep me awake. My belief is she would be better for some counter-excitement. A small earthquake! Anything of that sort.
Good-night! It's very late." But it came out next day that Gwen's pen was still scratching when this lady got to sleep an hour after.
CHAPTER XXVI
A PROFESSIONAL CONSULTATION ACROSS A COUNTER, AND HOW THE STORY OF THE MAN IN HYDE PARK WAS TOLD BY DOLLY. HOW AUNT M'RIAR KNEW THE NAME WAS NOT "DARRABLE." HOW SHE TOLD UNCLE MO WHOSE WIFE SHE WAS AND WHOSE MOTHER MRS. PRITCHARD WAS. HOW POLLY DAVERILL JUNIOR HAD DIED UNBAPTIZED, AND ATTEMPTS TO BULLY THE DEVIL ARE FUTILE. HOW HER MOTHER WAS FORMERLY BARMAID AT THE ONE TUN, BUT BECAME AUNT M'RIAR LATER, AND HOW THE TALLOW CANDLE JUST LASTED OUT. HOW DOLLY, VERY SOUND ASLEEP, WAS GOOD FOR HER AUNT
"I shouldn't take any violent exercise, if I was you, Mr. Wardle," said Mr. Ekings, the Apothecary, whose name you may remember Michael Ragstroar had borrowed and been obliged to relinquish. "I should be very careful what I ate, avoiding especially pork and richly cooked food. A diet of fowls and fish--preferably boiled...."
"Can't abide 'em!" said Uncle Moses, who was talking over his symptoms with Mr. Ekings at his shop, with Dolly on his knee. "And whose a-going to stand Sam for me, livin' on this and livin' on that? Roasted chicking's very pretty eating, for the sake of the soarsages, when you're a Lord Mayor; but for them as don't easy run to half-crowns for mouthfuls, a line has to be drawed. Down our Court a shilling has to go a long way, Dr. Ekings."
The medical adviser shook his head weakly. "You're an intractable patient, Mr. Moses," he said. He knew that Uncle Moses's circumstances were what is called moderate. So are a church mouse's; and, in both cases, the dietary is compulsory. Mr. Ekings tried for a common ground of agreement. "Fish doesn't mount up to much, by the pound," he said, vaguely.
"Fishes don't go home like butcher's meat," said Uncle Moses.
"You can't expect 'em to do that," said Mr. Ekings, glad of an indisputable truth. "But there's a vast amount of nourishment in 'em, anyway you put it."
"So there is, Dr. Ekings. In a vast amount of 'em. But you have to eat it all up. Similar, grass and cows. Only there's no bones in the grass.
Now, you know, what I'm wanting is a pick-me-up--something with a nice clean edge in the smell of it, like a bottle o' salts with holes in the stopper. And tasting of lemons. I ain't speaking of the sort that has to be shook when took. Nor yet with peppermint. It's a clear sort to see through, up against the light, what I want."
Mr. Ekings, a humble practitioner in a poor neighbourhood, supplied more mixtures in response to suggestions like Uncle Mo's, than to legitimate prescriptions. So he at once undertook to fill out the order, saying in reply to an inquiry, that it would come to threepence, but that Uncle Mo must bring or send back the bottle. He then added a few drops of chloric ether and ammonia, and some lemon to a real square bottleful of aq. pur.
haust., and put a label on it with superhuman evenness, on which was written "The Mixture--one tablespoonful three times a day." Uncle Moses watched the preparation of this _elixir vitae_ with the extremest satisfaction. He foresaw its beneficial effect on his system, which he had understood was to blame for his occasional attacks of faintness, which had latterly been rather more frequent. Anything in such a clean phial, with such a new cork, would be sure to do his system good.
Mrs. Riley came in for a bottle which was consciously awaiting her in front of the leeches, and identified it as "the liniment," before Mr.
Ekings could call to mind where he'd stood it. She remarked, while calculating coppers to cover the outlay, that she understood it was to be well r-r-r-rhubbed in with the parrum of her hand, and that she was to be thr-rusted not to lit the patiint get any of it near his mouth, she having been borrun in Limerick morr' than a wake ago. She remarked to Uncle Mo that his boy was looking his bist, and none the wurruss for his accidint. Uncle Mo felt braced by the Celtic atmosphere, and thanked Mrs. Riley cordially, for himself and Dave.
"Shouldn't do that, if I was you, Mr. Wardle," said Mr. Ekings the Apothecary, as Uncle Mo hoisted Dolly on his shoulder to carry her home.
"No more shouldn't I, if you was me, Dr. Ekings," was the intractable patient's reply. "Why, Lard bless you, man alive, Dolly's so light it's as good as a lift-up, only to have her on your shoulders! Didn't you never hear tell of gravitation? Well--that's it!" But Uncle Mo was out of his depth.
"It'll do ye a powerful dale of good, Mr. Wardle," said Mrs. Riley.
"Niver you mind the docther!" And Uncle Mo departed, braced again, with his _elixir vitae_ in his left hand, and Dolly on his right shoulder, conversing on a topic suggested by Dr. Ekings's remarks about diet.
"When Dave tooktid Micky to see the fisses corched in the Turpentine, there was a jenklum corched a fiss up out of the water, and another jenklum corched another fiss up out of the water...." Dolly was pursuing the subject in the style of the Patriarchs, who took their readers'
leisure for granted, and never grudged a repetition, when Uncle Mo interrupted her to point out that it was not Dave who took Michael Ragstroar to Hy' Park, but _vice versa_. Also that the whole proceeding had been a disgraceful breach of discipline, causing serious alarm to himself and Aunt M'riar, who had nearly lost their reason in consequence--the exact expression being "fritted out of their wits." If that young Micky ever did such a thing again, Uncle Mo said, the result would be a pretty how-do-you-do, involving possibly fatal consequences to Michael, and certainly local flagellation of unheard-of severity.
Dolly did not consider this was to the point, and pursued her narrative without taking notice of it. "There was a jenklum corched a long fiss, and there was another jenklum corched a short fiss, and there was another jenklum corched a short fiss...." This seemed to bear frequent repetition, but came to an end as soon as history ceased to supply the facts. Then another phase came, that of the fishers who didn't corch no fiss, whose name appeared to be Legion. They lasted as far as the arch into Sapps Court, and Uncle Mo seemed rather to relish the monotony than otherwise. He would have made a good Scribe in the days of the Pharaohs.
But Dolly came to the end of even the unsuccessful fishermen. Just as they reached home, however, she produced her convincing incident, all that preceded it having evidently been introduction pure and simple.
"And there was a man saided fings to Micky, and saided fings to Dave, and saided fings to...." Here Dolly stuttered, became confused, and ended up weakly: "No, he didn't saided no fings, to no one else."
A little _finesse_ was necessary to land the _elixir vitae_ on the parlour chimney-piece, and Dolly on the hearthrug. Then Uncle Mo sat down in his own chair to recover breath, saying in the course of a moment:--"And what did the man say to Dave, and what did he say to young Sparrowgrass?" He did not suppose that "the man" was a person capable of identification; he was an unknown unit, but good to talk about.
"He saided Mrs. Picture." Dolly placed the subject she proposed to treat broadly before her audience, with a view to its careful analysis at leisure.
"What on 'arth did he say Mrs. Picture for? _He_ don't know Mrs.
Picture." The present tense used here acknowledged the man's authenticity, and encouraged the little maid--three and three-quarters, you know!--to further testimony. It came fairly fluently, considering the witness's recent acquisition of the English language.
"He doos know Mrs. Picture, ass he doos, and he saided Mrs. Picture to Micky, ass he did." This was plenty for a time, and during that time the witness could go on nodding with her eyes wide open, to present the subject lapsing, for she had found out already how slippery grown-up people are in argument. Great force was added by her curls, which lent themselves to flapping backwards and forwards as she nodded.
It was impossible to resist such evidence, outwardly at least, and Uncle Mo appeared to accept it. "Then the man said Mrs. Picture to Dave," said he. "And Dave told it on to you, was that it?" He added, for the general good of morality:--"_You're_ a nice lot of young Pickles!"