Such fun! He went upstairs and stopped two hours, and I do believe they've got to some sort of decorous trothplight. Only A. C. when accused, only says he has shown unmistakable evidence of something or other, I forget what. Why on earth need people be such fools? There they both _are_, and what more _can_ they want? She admits, however, that there is 'no engagement'! When anybody says _that_, it means they've been kissing. You ask Irene if it doesn't. Any female, I mean. Now go on.
"A more secluded little corner of the world than Sapps Court I never saw! Clo's barouche shot us out at the head of the street it turns out of, and went to leave a letter at St. John's Wood and be back in half an hour. We had no idea of a visitation, then. Besides, Clo had to be at Down Street at half-past five. There is an arch you go in by, and we nearly stuck and could go neither way. I was sorry to find the houses looked so respectable, but Clo tells me she can take me to some much better ones near Drury Lane. Dave, the boy, and his Uncle and Aunt, and a little sister, Dolly, whom I nearly ate, live in the last house down the Court. When we arrived Dolly was watering a sunflower, almost religiously, in the front-garden eight feet deep. It would die vethy thoon, she said, if neglected. She told us a long screed, about Heaven knows what--I think it related to the sunflower, which a naughty boy had chopped froo wiv a knife, and Dave had tighted on, successfully.
"The old prizefighter is just like Dr. Johnson, and I thought he was going to hug Clo, he was so delighted to see her, and so affectionate.
So was Aunt Maria, a good woman who has lost her looks, but who must have had some, twenty years ago. I got Dolly on my knee, and _we_ did the hugging, Dolly telling me secrets deliciously, and tickling. She is four next birthday, a fact which Aunt Maria thought should have produced a sort of what the _Maestro_ calls _precisione_. I preferred Dolly as she was, and we exchanged locks of hair.
"We had only been there a very short time when Uncle Moses suggested that Dave should fetch a letter he was writing, from 'Old Mrs.
Prichard's Room' upstairs, and Dave--who is a dear little chap of six or seven or eight--rushed upstairs to get it. I forgot how much I told you about the family, but I know I said something in yesterday's letter.
Anyhow, 'old Mrs. Prichard' was not new to me, and I was very curious to see her. So when more than five minutes had passed and no Dave reappeared, I proposed that Dolly and I should go up to look for him, and we went, Aunt Maria following in our wake, to cover contingencies.
She went back, after introducing me to the very sweet old lady in a high-backed chair, who comes in as the explanation of the beginning of this illegible scrawl. How funny children are! I do believe Uncle Moses was right when he said that Dave, if anything, preferred his loves to be 'a bit elderly.' I am sure these babies see straight through wrinkles and decay and toothless gums to the burning soul the old shell imprisons, and love it. Do you recollect that picture in the Louvre we both had seen, and thought the same about?--the old man with the sweet face and the appalling excrescence on the nose, and the little boy's unflinching love as he looks up at him. Oh, that nose!!! However, there is nothing of that in old Mrs. Picture, as Dave called her, according to her own spelling. _Her_ face is simply perfect.... There!--I went in to look at it again by the moonlight, and I was quite right. And as for her wonderful old white hair!... I could write for ever about her.
"I think our incursion must have frightened the old soul, because she had lived up there by herself, except for her woman-friend who is out all day, and Aunt Maria and the children now and then, since she came to the house; so that a perfect stranger rushing in lawlessly--well, can't you fancy? However, she really stood it very well, considering.
"'I have heard of you, ma'am, from Dave. He's told me all about your rings. Where is the boy?... Haven't you, Dave--told me all about the lady's rings?'
"Dave came from some absorbing interest at the window, to say:--'It wasn't her,' with a sweet, impressive candour. He went back immediately.
Something was going on outside. I explained, as I was sharp enough to guess, that my mother was the lady with the rings. I got into conversation with the old lady, and we soon became friends. She was very curious about 'old Mrs. Marrable' in the country. Indeed, I believe Uncle Mo was not far wrong when he said she was as jealous as any schoolgirl. It is most amusing, the idea of these two octogenarians falling out over this small bone of contention!
"While we talked, Dave and Dolly looked out of the window, Dave constantly supplying bulletins of the something that was going on without. I could not make it out at first, and his interjections of 'Now she's took it off'--'Now she's put it on again'--made me think he was inspecting some lady who was 'trying on' in the opposite house. It appeared, however, that the thing that was taken off and put on was not a dress, but some sort of plaister or liniment applied to the face of a boy, the miscreant who had made a raid on Dave's garden that morning, and spoiled his sunflower (see _ante_). It was because Dave had become so engrossed in this that he had not come downstairs again with his letter.
"The old lady, I am happy to say, was most amiable, and took to me immensely. I couldn't undertake to say now exactly how we got on such good terms so quickly. We agreed about the wickedness of that boy, especially when Dave reported ingratitude on his part towards the sister, who was tending him, whom he smacked and whose hair he pulled.
To think of his smacking that dear girl that played the piano so nicely all day! And pulling her back-tails so she called out when she was actually succouring his lacerated face. I gathered that her name may have been Matilda, and that she wore plaits.
"'I think her such a nice, dear girl,' said old Mrs. Picture--I like that name for her--'because she plays the piano all day long, and I sit here and listen, and think of old times.' I asked a question. 'Why, no, my dear!--I can't say she knows any tunes. But she plays her scales all day, very nicely, and makes me think of when my sister and I played scales--oh, so many years ago! But we played tunes too. I sometimes think I could teach her "The Harmonious Blacksmith," if only we was a bit nearer.' I could see in her old face that she was back in the Past, listening to a memory. How I wished I had a piano to play 'The Harmonious Blacksmith' for her again!
"I got her somehow to talk of herself and her antecedents, but rather stingily. She married young and went abroad, but she seemed not to want to talk about this. I could not press her. She had come back home--from wherever she was--many years after her husband's death, with an only son, the survivor of a family of four children. He was a man, not a boy; at least, he married a year or so after. She 'could not say that he was dead.' Otherwise, she knew of no living relative. Her means of livelihood was an annuity 'bought by my poor son before....'--before something she either forgot to tell, or fought shy of--the last, I think. 'I'm very happy up here,' she said. 'Only I might not be, if I was one of those that wanted gaiety. Mrs. Burr she lives with me, and it costs her no rent, and she sees to me. And my children--I call 'em mine--come for company, 'most every day. Don't you, Dave?'
"Dave tore himself away from the pleasing spectacle of his enemy in hospital, and came to confirm this. 'Yorce!' said he, with emphasis. 'Me and Dolly!' He recited rapidly all the days of the week, an appointment being imputed to each. But he weakened the force of his rhetoric by adding:--'Only not some of 'em always!' Mrs. Picture then said:--'But you love your old granny in the country better than you do me, don't you, Davy dear?' Whereupon Dave shouted with all his voice:--'I _doesn't_!' and flushed quite red, indignantly.
"The old lady then said, most unfairly:--'Then which do you love best, dear child? Because you must love _one_ best, you know!' I thought Dave's answer ingenious:--'I loves whichever it _is_, best.' If only all young men were as candid about their loves, wouldn't they say the same?
"Dolly had picked up the recitation of the days of the week for her own private use, and was repeating it _ad libitum_ in a melodious undertone, always becoming louder on Flyday, Tackyday, Tunday. She was hanging over the window-sill watching the surgical case opposite. How glad I am now when I recollect my impulse to catch the little maid and keep her on my knee! Dolly's good Angel prompted this, and had a hand in my inspiration to tell the story of Cinderella, with occasional refrains of song which I do believe old Mrs. Picture enjoyed as much as the two smalls. I shudder as I think what it would have been if they had still been at the window when it came--the thing I have been so long postponing.
"It came without any warning that it would have been possible to act upon. We might certainly have shouted to those below to stand clear, _if we had ourselves understood_. But how _could_ we? You can have no idea how bewildering it was.
"When something you can't explain portends Heavens-know-what, what on earth can you do? Pretend it's ghosts, and very curious and interesting? I think I might have done so this time, when an alarming noise set all our nerves on the jar. It was not a noise capable of description--something like Behemoth hiccuping goes nearest. Only I didn't want to frighten the babies, so I said nothing about the ghosts.
Dolly said it wasn't her--an obvious truth. Old Mrs. Picture said it must have been her chair--an obvious fallacy. She then deserted her theory and suggested that Dave should 'go down and see if anything was broken,' which Dave immediately started to do, much excited.
"I felt very uncomfortable and creepy, for it recalled the shock of earthquake Papa and I were in at Pisa two years ago--it is a feeling one never gets over, that _terremotitis_, as Papa called it. I believe I was more alarmed than Dolly, and as for Dave, I am sure that so far he thought the whole thing the best fun imaginable. Picture to yourself, as he slams the door behind him and shouts his message to the world below, that I remain seated facing the light, while Dolly on my knee listens to a postscript of Cinderella. My eyes are fixed on the beauty of the old side-face I see against the light. Get this image clear, and then I will tell you what followed.
"Even as I sat looking at the old lady, that noise came again, and plaster came tumbling down from the ceiling, obscuring the window behind. As I fixed my eyes upon it, falling, I saw beyond it what really made me think at first that I was taking leave of my senses. The houses opposite seemed to shoot straight up into the air, as though they were reflections in a mirror which had fallen forward. An instant after, I saw what had happened. It was the window that was moving, not the houses.
"It was so odd! I had time to see all this and change my mind, before the great crash came to explain what had happened. For until the roar of a cataract of disintegrated brickwork, followed by a cloud of choking dust, showed that the wall of the room had fallen outwards, leaving the world clear cut and visible under a glorious afternoon sky until that dust-cloud came and veiled it, I could not have said what the thing was, or why. There seemed to be time--good solid time!--between the sudden day-blaze and the crash below, and I took advantage of it to wonder what on earth was happening.
"Then I knew it all in an instant, and saw in another instant that the ceiling was sagging down; for aught I knew, under the weight of a falling roof.
"Old Mrs. Picture was not frightened at all. 'You get this little Dolly safe, my dear,' said she to me. 'I can get myself as far as the landing.
But don't you fret about me. I'm near my time.' She seemed quite alive to the fact that the house was falling, but at eighty, what did that matter? She added quite quietly:--'It's owing to the repairs.' Dolly suddenly began to weep, panic-struck.
"I saw that Mrs. Picture could not rise from her chair, though she tried. But what could I do? Any attempt of mine to pick her up and carry her would only have led to delay. I saw it would be quicker to get help, and ran for it, overtaking Dave on the stairs.
"Below was chaos. The kitchen where I had left my cousin talking with Uncle Mo and Aunt Maria was all but darkened, and the place was a cloud of dust. I could see that Uncle Mo was wrenching open the street-door, which seemed to have stuck, and then that it opened, letting in an avalanche of rubbish, and some light. Cries came from outside, and Aunt Maria called out that it was Mrs. Burr. Thereon Uncle Mo, crying 'Stand clear, all!' began flinging the rubbish back into the room with marvellous alacrity for a man of his years, and no consideration at all for glass or crockery. I felt sick, you may fancy, when it came home to me that someone was crying aloud with pain, buried under that heap of fallen brickwork.
"But we could be of no use yet a while, so I told Clo and Aunt Maria to come upstairs and help to get the old lady down. They did as they were bid, being, in fact, terrified out of their wits, and quite unable to make suggestions. A male voice came from within the room where I had just left Mrs. Picture by herself. I took it quite as a matter of course.
"'You keep out on that landing, some of you, till I tell you to come in.
This here floor won't carry more than my weight.' This was what I heard a man say, speaking from where the window had been, mysteriously. I was aware that he had stepped from some ladder on to the floor of the room, jumping on it recklessly as though to test its bearing power. Then that he had gathered up my old new acquaintance in a bundle, carefully made in a few seconds, and had said:--'Come along down!' to all whom it might concern. He shepherded us, all three women and the two children, into a back-bedroom below, and went away, leaving his bundle on the bed; saying, after glancing round at the cornice:--'You'll be safe enough here for a bit, just till we can see our way.' He had a peculiar hat or cap, and I saw that he was a fireman. I did not know that firemen held any intercourse with human creatures. It appears that they do occasionally, under reserves.
"Then it was that I became alarmed about my old lady. Her face had lost what colour it had, and her finger-tips had become blue and lifeless.
But she spoke, faintly enough, although quite clearly, always urging us to go to a safer place, and leave her to her luck. This was, of course, nonsense. Nor was there any safer place to go to, so far as I understood the position. Aunt Maria went down to find brandy, if possible, in the heart of the confusion below. She found half a wineglassful somewhere, and brought back with it a report of progress. They had to be cautious in removing the rubbish, so that no worse should come to the sufferer it had half buried. We kept it from the old lady that this was her fellow-lodger, Mrs. Burr, and made her take some brandy, whether she liked it or no. I then went down to see for myself, and Clo came too.
"The police had taken prompt possession of the Court, and only a limited force of volunteers were allowed to share in the removal of the rubbish. Uncle Mo and the fireman, who seemed to be a personal friend, were attacking the ruin from within, throwing the loose bricks back into the kitchen, and working for the dear life.
"As we came in they halted, in obedience to, 'Easy a minute, you inside there. Gently does it,' from the spontaneous leading mind, whoever he was, without. Uncle Mo, streaming with perspiration, and forgetful of social niceties, turned to me saying:--'You go back, my dear, you go back! 'Tain't for you to see. You go back!' I replied:--'Nonsense, Mr.
Wardle! What do you take me for?' For had I not stood beside _you_, my darling, when you lay dead in the Park?
"I could see what had taken place. The woman had been just about to knock at the door when the wall fell from above. Nothing had struck her direct, else she would almost surely have been killed. The ruin had fallen far enough from the house to avoid this, but the recoil of its disintegration (I'm so proud of that expression) had jammed her against the wall and choked the door.... I'm so sleepy I can't write another word."
No doubt the sequel described how Mrs. Burr, rescued alive, but insensible, was borne away on a stretcher to the Hospital, and how the party were released from the house, whose complete collapse must have presented itself to their excited imaginations as more than a possibility. No doubt also obscure points were made plain; as, for instance, the one which is prominent in the short newspaper report, which runs as follows:--"A singular fall of brickwork, the consequences of which might easily have proved fatal, occurred on Thursday last at Sapps Court, Marylebone, when the greater part of the front-wall of No.
7 fell forward into the street, blocking the main entrance and causing for a time the greatest alarm to the inhabitants, who, however, were all ultimately rescued uninjured. A remarkable circumstance was that the cloud of dust raised by the shower of loose brickwork was taken for smoke and was sufficient to cause an alarm of fire; as a matter of fact, two engines had arrived before the circumstances were explained. The mistake was not altogether unfortunate, as an escape ladder which was passing at the time was of use in reaching the upper floors, whose tenants were at one time in considerable danger. A sempstress, Mrs.
Susan Burr, living upstairs, was returning home at the moment of the calamity, and was severely injured by the falling brickwork, but no serious result is anticipated. A costermonger of the name of Rackstraw also received some severe contusions, but if we may trust the report of his son, an intelligent lad of thirteen, he is very little the worse by his misadventure."
Although "no serious result was anticipated" in Mrs. Burr's case--in the newspaper sense of the words, which referred to the Coroner--the results were serious enough to Mrs. Burr. She was disabled from work indefinitely, and was too much damaged to hope to leave the Hospital, for weeks at any rate. A relative was found, ready to take charge of her when that time should arrive, but apparently not ready to disclose her own name. For, so far as can be ascertained, she was never spoken of at Sapps Court otherwise than as "Mrs. Burr's married niece."
Mr. Bartlett was on the spot, within an hour, taking measures for the immediate safety of the inmates, and his own ultimate pecuniary advantage. He pointed out it was quite unnecessary for anyone to turn out of the rooms below, although he admitted that the open air had got through the top story. His immediate resources were quite equal to a temporary arrangement practicable in a couple of hours or so. A contrivance of inconceivable slightness, involving no drawbacks whatever to families occupying the premises it was engendered in, was necessary to hold the roof up tempory, for fear it should come with a run. It was really a'most nothing in the manner of speaking. You just shoved a len'th of quartering into each room, all down the house to the bottom, with a short scaffold-board top and bottom to distribute out the weight, and tapped 'em across with a 'ammer, and there you were! The top one ketched the roof coming down, and you had no need to be apprehensive, because it would take a tidy weight--double what Mr. Bartlett was going to put upon it.
This was a security against a complete collapse of the roof and upper floor, but if it come on heavy rain, what would keep Aunt M'riar's room dry? She and Dolly could not sleep in a puddle. Mr. Bartlett, however, pledged himself to make all that good with a few yards of tarpauling, and Aunt M'riar and Dolly went to bed, with sore misgivings as to whether they would wake alive next day. Dolly woke in the night and screamed with terror at what she conceived was a spectre from the grave, but which was really nothing but a short length of scaffold-pole standing upright at the foot of her bed.
This was bad enough, but it further appeared next day that a new floor would be _de rigueur_ overhead in Mrs. Prichard's room. Not only were sundry timber balks shoved up against the house outside so they couldn't constitoot a hindrance to anyone--so Mr. Bartlett said when he giv' in a price for the job--but the street-door wouldn't above half shet to, and all the windows had to be seen to. Add to this afflictions from tarpaulings that would keep you bone-dry even if there come a thunderstorm--or perhaps, properly speaking, that would have done so only they were just a trifle wore at critical points--and smells of damp plaster that quite took away the relish from your food, and you will form some idea what remaining in the house during the repairs meant to Uncle Mo and his belongings.
Not that Dolly and Dave took their sufferings to heart much. The novelties of the position went far to compensate them for its drawbacks.
One supreme grief there was for them, certainly. The avalanche of brickwork had destroyed, utterly and irrevocably, that cherished sunflower. They had clung to a lingering hope that, as soon as the claims of humanity had been discharged by the rescue of the victims of the catastrophe, the attention of the rescuers would be directed to carefully removing the _debris_ from above their buried treasure. They were shocked at the callous indifference shown to its fate. It was an early revelation of the heartlessness of mankind. Nevertheless, the shattered sunflower was recovered in the end, and Dolly took it to bed with her, and cried herself to sleep over it.
So it seemed impossible for Dave and Dolly, and their uncle and aunt, all to remain on in the half-wrecked house. But then--where had they to go to? It was clear that Dolly and her aunt would have to turn out, and the only resource seemed to be that they should go away for a while to her grandmother's, an old lady at Ealing, who existed, but went no further. She had never entered Sapps Court, but her daughters, Aunt M'riar and Dolly's mother, had paid her dutiful visits. There was no ill-feeling--none whatever! So to Ealing Aunt M'riar went, two or three days later, and Dave went too, although he was convinced Uncle Mo couldn't do without him.
The old boy himself remained in residence, being fed by The Rising Sun; which sounds like poetry, but relates to chops and sausages and a half-a-pint, a monotonous dietary on which he subsisted until his family returned a month later to a reinstated mansion. He lived a good deal at The Sun during this period, relying on the society of his host and his friend Jerry. His retrospective chats with the latter recorded his impressions of the event which had deprived him of his household, and left him a childless wanderer on the surface of Marylebone.
"Red-nosed Tommy," said he, referring to Mr. Bartlett, "he wouldn't have put in that bit of bressemer to ketch up those rotten joists over M'riar's room if I hadn't told him. We should just have had the floor come through and p'r'aps my little maid and M'riar squashed dead right off. You see, they would have took it all atop, and no mistake. Pore Susan got it bad enough, but it wasn't a dead squelch in her case. It come sideways." Uncle Mo emptied his pipe on the table, and thoughtfully made the ash do duty first for Mrs. Burr, and then for Aunt M'riar and Dolly, by means of a side-push and a top-squash with his finger. He looked at the last result sadly as he refilled his pipe--a hypothetically bereaved man. Dolly might have been as flat as that!
"How's Susan Burr getting on?" asked Mr. Alibone.
"That's according to how much money you're inclined to put on the doctors. Going by looks only--what M'riar says--she don't give the idea of coming to time. Only then, there's Sister Nora--Miss Grahame they call her now; very nice lady--she's on the doctor's side, and says Mrs.
Burr means to pull round. Hope so!"
"How's Carrots--Carrots senior--young Radishes' dad?"