But this stopped the nodding, which changed suddenly to a negative shake, of great decision. "The man never saided nuffint to Dave, no he didn't."
"Thought you said he did. You're a good 'un for a witness-box! Come up and sit on your old uncle. The man said Mrs. Picture to young Sparrowgrass--was that it?" Dolly nodded violently. "And young Sparrowgrass he passed it on to Dave?" But it appeared not, and Dolly had to wrestle with an explanation. It was too much involved for letterpress, but Uncle Mo thought he could gather that Dave had been treated as a mere bystander, supposed to be absorbed in angling, during a conversation between Michael Ragstroar and the Man. "Dave he came home and told you what the Man said to Micky--was that it?" So Uncle Mo surmised aloud, not at all clear that Dolly would understand him. But, as it turned out, he was right, and Dolly was glad to be able to attest his version of the facts. She resumed the nodding, but slower, as though so much emphasis had ceased to be necessary. "Micky toldited Dave," she said. She then became immensely amused at a way of looking at the event suggested by her uncle. The Man had told Micky; Micky had told Dave; Dave had told Dolly; and Dolly had told Uncle Mo, who now intensified the interest of the event by saying he should tell Aunt M'riar. Dolly became vividly anxious for this climax, and felt that this was life indeed, when Uncle Mo called out to Aunt M'riar:--"Come along here, M'riar, and see what sort of head and tail you can make of this here little Dolly!" Whereupon Aunt M'riar came in front out at the back, and listened to a repetition of Dolly's tale while she dried her arms, which had been in a wash-tub.
"Well, Mo," she said, when Dolly had repeated it, more or less chaotically, "if you ask me, what I say is--you make our Dave speak out and tell you, when he's back from school, and say you won't have no nonsense. For the child is that secretive it's all one's time is worth to be even with him.... What's the Doctor's stuff for you've been spending your money on at Ekingses?"
"Only a stimulatin' mixture for to give tone to the system. Dr. Ekings says it'll do it a world o' good. Never known it fail, he hasn't."
"Have you been having any more alarming symptoms, Mo, and never told me?"
"Never been better in my life, M'riar. But I thought it was getting on for time I should have a bottle o' stuff, one sort or other. Don't do to go too long without a dose, nowadays." Whereupon Aunt M'riar looked incredulous, and read the label, and smelt the bottle, and put it back on the mantelshelf. And Uncle Mo asked for the wineglass broke off short, out of the cupboard; because it was always best to be beforehand, whether you had anything the matter or not.
Whatever Aunt M'riar said, Dave was not secretive. Probably she meant communicative, and was referring to the fact that Dave, whenever he was called on for information, though always prompt to oblige, invariably made reply to his questioner in an undertone, in recognition of a mutual confidence, and exclusion from it of the Universe. He had a soul above the vulgarities of publication. Aunt M'riar merely used a word that sounded well, irrespective of its meaning--a common literary practice.
Therefore Dave, when applied to by Uncle Mo for particulars of what "the Man" said, made a statement of which only portions reached the general public. This was the usual public after supper; for Mr. Alibone's companionship in an evening pipe was an almost invariable incident at that hour.
"What's the child a-sayin' of, Mo?" said Aunt M'riar.
"Easy a bit, old Urry Scurry!" said Uncle Mo, drawing on his imagination for an epithet. "Let me do a bit of listening.... What was it the party said again, Davy--just _pre_cisely?..." Dave was even less audible than before in his response to this, and Uncle Mo evidently softened it for repetition:--"Said if Micky told him any--etceterer--lies he'd rip his heart out? Was that it, Dave?"
"Yorce," said Dave, aloud and emphatically. "_This_ time!" Which seemed to imply that the speaker had refrained from doing so, to his credit, on some previous occasion. Dave laid great stress on this point.
Aunt M'riar seemed rather panic struck at the nature of this revelation.
"Well now, Mo," said she, "I do wonder at you, letting the child tell such words! And before Mr. Alibone, too!"
Mr. Jerry's expression twinkled, as though he protested against being credited with a Pharisaical purity, susceptible to shocks. Uncle Mo said, with less than usual of his easy-going manner:--"I'm a going, M'riar, to get to the bottom of this here start. So you keep outside o'
the ropes!" and then after a little by-play with Dave and Dolly, which made the hair of both rougher than ever, he said suddenly to Dave:--"Well, and wasn't you frightened?"
"Micky wasn't frightened," said Dave, discreetly evasive. He objected to pursuing the subject, and raised a new issue. The sketch that followed of the interview between Micky and the Man was a good deal blurred by constant India-rubber, but its original could be inferred from it--probably as follows, any omissions to conciliate public censorship being indicated by stars. Micky speaks first:
"Who'll you rip up? You lay 'ands upon me, that's all! You do, and I'll blind your eyesight, s'elp me! Why, I'd summing a Police Orficer, and have you took to the Station, just as soon as look at you...." It may be imagined here that Michael's voice rose to a half-shriek, following some movement of the Man towards him. "I would, by Goard! You try it on, that's all!"
"Shut up with your * * row, you * * young * * ... No, master, I ain't molestin' of the boy; only just frightening him for a bit of a spree!
_I_ don't look like the sort to hurt boys, do I, guv'nor?" This was addressed to a bystander, named in Dave's report as "the gentleman." Who was accompanied by another, described as "the lady." The latter may have said to the former:--"I think he looks a very kind-hearted man, my dear, and you are making a fuss about nothing." The latter certainly said "Hggrromph!" or something like it, which the reporter found difficult to render. Then the man assumed a hypocritical and plausible manner, saying to Michael:--"I'm your friend, my boy, and there's a new shilling for you, good for two * * tanners any day of the week." Micky seemed to have been softened by this, and entered into a colloquy with the donor, either not heard or not understood by Dave, whose narrative seemed to point to his having been sent to a distance, with a doubt about inapplicable epithets bestowed on him by the Man, calling for asterisks in a close report. Some of these were probably only half-understood, even by Micky; being, so to speak, the chirps of a gaol-bird. But Dave's report seemed to point to "Now, is that * * young * * to be trusted not to split?" although he made little attempt to render the asterisky parts of speech.
Uncle Mo and Mr. Jerry glanced at one another, seeming to understand a phrase that had puzzled Aunt M'riar.
"That was it, Mo," said Mr. Jerry, exactly as if Uncle Mo had spoken, "_spit upon_ meant _split upon_." Dave in his innocence had supposed that a profligacy he was himself sometimes guilty of had been referred to. He felt that his uncle's knee was for the moment the stool of repentance, but was relieved when a new reading was suggested. There could be no disgrace in splitting, though it might be painful.
"And, of course," said Uncle Mo, ruffling Dave's locks, "of course, you kept your mouth tight shut--hay?" Dave, bewildered, assented. He connected this _bouche cousue_ with his own decorous abstention, not without credit to himself. Who shall trace the inner workings of a small boy's brain? "Instead of telling of it all, straight off, to your poor old uncle!" There was no serious indignation in Uncle Mo's tone, but the boy was too new for nice distinctions. The suggestion of disloyalty wounded him deeply, and he rushed into explanation.
"Becorze--becorze--becorze--becorze," said he--"becorze Micky said _not_ to!" He arrived at his climax like a squib that attains its ideal.
"Micky's an owdacious young varmint," said Uncle Mo. "Small boys that listened to owdacious young varmints never used to come to much good, not in _my_ time!" Dave looked shocked at Uncle Mo's experience. But he had reservations to offer as to Micky, which distinguished him from vulgar listeners to incantations. "Micky said not to, and Micky said Uncle Mo didn't want to hear tell of no Man out in Hoy' Park, and me to keep my mouth shut till I was tolded to speak."
"And you told him to speak, and he spoke!" said Mr. Jerry, charitably helping Dave. "You couldn't expect any fairer than that, old Mo." Public opinion sanctioned a concession in this sense, and Dave came off the stool of repentance.
"Very good, then!" said Uncle Mo. "That's all squared, and we can cross it off. But what I'm trying after is, how did this here ...
bad-languagee"--he halted a minute to make this word--"come to know anything about Goody Prichard upstairs?"
"Did he?" said Mr. Jerry, who of course had only heard Dave on the subject.
"This young party said so," said Uncle Mo, crumpling Dolly to identify her, "at the very first go off. Didn't you, little ginger-pop, hay?"
This new epithet was a passing recognition of the suddenness with which Dolly had broken out as an informant. It gratified her vanity, and made her chuckle.
Dave meanwhile had been gathering for an oratorical effort, and now culminated. "I never told Dolly nuffint _about_ Mrs. Picture upstairs.
What _I_ said was 'old widder lady.'"
"Dolly translated it, Mo, don't you see?" said Mr. Jerry. Then, to illuminate possible obscurity, he added:--"Off o' one slate onto the other! Twig?"
"I twig you, Jerry." Uncle Mo winked at his friend to show that he was alive to surroundings and tickled Dave suddenly from a motive of policy.
"How come this cove to know anything about any widder lady--hay? That's a sort of p'int we've got to consider of." Dave was impressed by his uncle's appearance of profound thought, and was anxious not to lag behind in the solution of stiff problems. He threw his whole soul into his answer. "Because he was _The Man_." Nathan the prophet can scarcely have been more impressive. Perhaps, on the occasion Dave's answer recalls, someone said:--"Hullo!" in Hebrew, and gave a short whistle.
That was what Mr. Jerry did, this time.
Uncle Mo enjoined self-restraint, telegraphically; and said, verbally:--"What man, young Legs? Steady a minute, and tell us who he was." Which will be quite intelligible to anyone whose experience has included a small boy in thick boots sitting on his knee, and becoming excited by a current topic.
Dave restrained his boots, and concentrated his mind on a statement. It came with pauses and repetitions, which may be omitted. "He worze the same Man as when you and me and Micky, only not Dolly, see him come along down the Court Sunday morning. _Munce_ ago!" This was emphatic, to express the date's remoteness. "He wanted for to be told about old Widow Darrable who lived down this Court, and Micky he said no such name, nor yet anywhere's about this neighbourhood, he said. And the Man he said Micky was a young liar. And Micky he said who are you a-callin'
liar?..."
"_What_ name did he say?" Uncle Mo interrupted, with growing interest.
Dave repeated his misapprehension of it, which incorporated an idea that similar widows would have similar surnames. If one was Marrable, it was only natural that another should be Darrable.
Aunt M'riar, whose interest also had been some time growing, struck in incisively. "The name was Daverill. He's mixed it up with the old lady in the country he calls his granny." She was the more certain this was so owing to a recent controversy with Dave about this name, ending in his surrender of the pronunciation "Marrowbone" as untenable, but introducing a new element of confusion owing to Marylebone Church, a familiar landmark.
There was something in Aunt M'riar's manner that made Uncle Mo say:--"Anything disagreed, M'riar?" Because, observe, his interest in this mysterious man in the Park turned entirely on Mrs. Prichard's relations with him, and he had never imputed any knowledge of him to Aunt M'riar. Why should he? Indeed, why should we, except from the putting of two and two together? Of which two twos, Uncle Mo might have known either the one or the other--according to which was which--but not both. This story has to confess occasional uncertainty about some of its facts. There may have been more behind Uncle Mo's bit of rudeness about Aunt M'riar's disquiet than showed on the surface. However, he never asked any questions.
Those who have ever had the experience of keeping their own counsel for a long term of years know that every year makes it harder to take others into confidence. A concealed troth-plight, marriage, widowhood--to name the big concealments involving no disgrace--gets less and less easy to publish as time slips by, even as the hinges rust of doors that no man opens. There may be nothing to blush about in that cellar, but the key may be lost and the door-frame may have gripped the door above, or the footstone jammed it from below, and such fungus-growth as the darkness has bred has a claim to freedom from the light. Let it all rest--that is its owner's word to his own soul--let it rest and be forgotten! All the more when the cellar is full of garbage, and he knows it.
There was no garbage in Aunt M'riar's cellar that she was guilty of, but for all that she would have jumped at any excuse to leave that door tight shut. The difficulty was not so much in what she had to tell--for her conscience was clear--as in rousing an unprepared mind to the hearing of it. Uncle Mo, quite the reverse of apathetic to anything that concerned the well-being of any of his surroundings, probably accounted Aunt M'riar's as second to none but the children's. Nevertheless, the difficulty of rousing him to an active interest in this hidden embarrassment of hers, of which he had no suspicion, was so palpable to Aunt M'riar, that she was sorely put to it to decide on a course of action. And the necessity for action was not imaginary. Keep in mind that all Uncle Mo's knowledge of Aunt M'riar's antecedents was summed up in the fact of her widowhood, which he took for granted--although he had never received it _totidem verbis_ when she first came to supplant Mrs.
Twiggins--and which had been confirmed as Time went on, and no husband appeared to claim her. Even if he could have suspected that her husband was still living, there was nothing in the world to connect him with this escaped convict. No wonder Uncle Mo's complete unconsciousness seemed to present an impassable barrier to a revelation. Aunt M'riar had not the advantages of the Roman confessional, with its suggestive _guichet_. Had some penitent, deprived of that resource, been driven back on the analogous arrangement of a railway booking-office, the difficulty of introducing the subject could scarcely have been greater.
However, Aunt M'riar was not going to be left absolutely without assistance. That evening--the evening, that is, of the day when Dave told the tale of the Man in the Park--Uncle Moses showed an unusual restlessness, following on a period of thoughtfulness and silence. After supper he said suddenly:--"I'm a-going to take a turn out, M'riar. Any objection?"
"None o' my making, Mo. Only Mr. Jerry, he'll be round. What's to be told him?"
"Ah--I'll tell you. Just you say to Jerry--just you tell him...."
"What'll I tell him?" For Uncle Mo appeared to waver.
"Just you tell him to drop in at The Sun, and bide till I come. They've a sing-song going on to-night, with the pianner. He'll make hisself happy for an hour. I'll be round in an hour's time, tell him."
"And where are you off for all of an hour, Mo?"
"That's part of the p'int, M'riar. Don't you be too inquis-eye-tive....
No--I don't mind tellin' of ye, if it's partic'lar. I'm going to drop round to the Station to shake hands with young Simmun Rowe--they've made him Inspector there--he's my old pal Jerky Rowe's son I knew from a boy.
Man under forty, as I judge. But he won't let me swaller up _his_ time, trust him! Tell Jerry I'll jine him at half-after nine, the very latest."
"I'll acquaint him what you say, Mo. And you bear in mind what Mr.
Jeffcoat at The Sun had to say about yourself, Mo."