"Because of the girl Emma.... Oh yes! I was his mother, but ..." She stopped short. Her meaning was clear; some sons would cripple the strongest mother's love.
"Then you had to give up the house," said Gwen, to help her away from the memory that stung her, vividly.
"I gave it up and sold the furniture, all but one or two bits I kept by me--Dave Wardle's desk, and the arm-chair. I went to a lodging at Sidcup--a pretty place with honeysuckles round my window. I lived there a many years, and had friends. Then the railway came, and they pulled the cottage down--Mrs. Hutchinson's. And all the folk I knew were driven away--went to America, many of them; all the Hutchinsons went. I remember that time well. But oh dear--the many moves I had after that! I cannot tell them all one from another...."
"It tires you to talk. Never mind now. Tell me another time."
"No--I'm not tired. I can talk. Where was I? Oh--the lodgings! I moved many times--the last time to Sapps Court, not so very long ago. I made friends with Mrs. Burr at Skillicks, as I told you."
"And that is what made you so poor?"
"Yes. I have only a few hundred pounds of my own, an annuity--it comes to sixty pounds a year. I have learned how to make it quite enough for me." Nevertheless, thought Gwen to herself, the good living in her temporary home in Cavendish Square had begun to tell favourably. Enough is seldom as good as a feast on sixty pounds a year. The old lady seemed, however, to dismiss the subject, going on with something antecedent to it:--"You see now, my dear, why I said 'I hope.' What could the unhappy boy be to me, or I to him? But I shall never know where he died, nor when."
Gwen tried to get at more about her past; but, at some point antecedent to this parting from her son, she seemed to become more reserved, or possibly she had overtasked her strength by so much talk. Gwen noticed that, in all she had told her, she had not mentioned a single name of a person. Some slight reference to Australia, which she had hoped would lead naturally to more disclosure, seemed rather, on second thoughts, to furnish a landmark or limit, with the inscription: "Thus far and no farther." You--whoever you are, reading this--may wonder why Gwen, who had so lately heard of Australia, and Mrs. Marrable's sister who went there over half-a-century ago, did not forthwith put two and two together, and speculate towards discovery of the truth. It may be strange to you to be told that she _was_ reminded of old Mrs. Marrable's utterance of the word "Australia" when old Mrs. Prichard spoke it, and simply let the recollection drop idly, _because_ it was so unlikely the two two's would add up. To be sure, she had quite forgotten, at the moment, _what_ the old Granny at Chorlton had said about the Antipodes.
It is only in books that people remember all through, quite to the end.
Bear this in mind, that this sisterhood of Maisie and Phoebe was entrenched in its own improbability, and that one antecedent belief of another mind at least would have been needed to establish it. A hint, a suggestion, might have capitalised a dozen claims to having said so all along. But all was primeval silence. There was not a murmur in Space to connect the two.
Mr. Bartlett, the builder, after inspecting the collapse of the wall, lost no time in drawing up a contract to reinstate same and make good roof, replacing all defective work with new where necessary; only in his haste to come to his impressive climax--"the work to be done to the satisfaction of yourself or your Surveyor for the sum of 99.8.4 (ninety-nine pounds eight shillings and fourpence),"--he spelt this last word _nesseracy_. He called on the landlord, the gentleman of independent means at Brixton, with this document in his pocket and a strong conviction of his own honesty in his face, and pointed out that what he said all along had come to pass. As his position had been that unless the house was rebuilt--by him--at great expense, it was pretty sure to come tumbling down, as these here old houses mostly did, it was difficult for the gentleman of independent means to gainsay him, especially as the latter's wife became a convert to Mr. Bartlett on the spot. It was his responsible and practical manner that did it. She directed her husband--a feeble sample of the manhood of Brixton--not to set up his judgment against that of professional experience, but to affix his signature forthwith to the document made and provided. He said weakly:--"I suppose I must." The lady said:--"Oh dear, no!--he must do as he liked." He naturally surrendered at discretion, and an almost holy expression of contentment stole over Mr. Bartlett's countenance, superseding his complexion, which otherwise was apt to remain on the memory after its outlines were forgotten.
To return once more to the drying of the premises after their reconstruction. The accepted view seemed to be that as soon as Mr.
Bartlett and his abettors cleared out and died away, the walls would begin to dry, and would make up for lost time. Everyone seemed inclined to palliate this backwardness in the walls, and to feel that they, themselves, had they been in a like position, could not have done much drying--with all them workmen in and out all day; just think!
But now a new era had dawned, and what with letting the air through, and setting alight to a bit of fire now and again, and the season keeping mild and favourable, with only light frosts in the early morning--only what could you expect just on to Christmas?--there seemed grounds for the confidence that these walls would do themselves credit, and yield up their chemically uncombined water by evaporation. HO2, who existed in those days, was welcome to stay where he was.
However, these walls refused to come to the scratch on any terms. Homer is silent as to how long the walls of Ilium took to dry; they must have been wet if they were built by Neptune. But one may be excused for doubting if they took as long as wet new plaster does, in premises parties are waiting to come into, and getting impatient, in London.
Ascribe this laxity of style to the historian's fidelity to his sources of information.
Not that it would be a fair comparison, in any case. For the walls of Troy were peculiar, having become a meadow with almost indecent haste during the boyhood of Ascanius, who was born before Achilles lost his temper; and before the decease of Anchises, who was old enough to be unable to walk at the sacking of the city. But no doubt you will say that that is all Virgil, and Virgil doesn't count.
The point we have to do with is that the walls at No. 7 did _not_ dry.
And you must bear in mind that it was not only Mrs. Prichard's apartment that was replastered, but that there was a lot done to the ceiling of Aunt M'riar's room as well, and a bit of the cornice tore away where the wall gave; so that the surveyor he ordered, when he come to see it, all the brickwork to come down as far as flush with the window, which had to be allowed extra for on the contract. Hence the decision--and even that was coming on to November--that the children should stop with their granny at Ealing while their aunt come up to get things a little in order, and the place well aired.
Aunt M'riar's return for this purpose drags the story on two or three weeks, but may just as well be told now as later.
When she made this second journey up to London, she found Mr. Bartlett's ministrations practically ended, his only representatives being a man, a boy, and a composite smell, whereof one of the components was the smell of the man. Another, at the moment of her arrival, putty, was going shortly to be a smell of vivid green paint, so soon as ever he had got these two or three panes made good. For he was then going to put a finishing coat on all woodwork previously painted, and leave his pots in the way till he thought fit to send for them, which is a house-painter's prerogative. He seemed to be able to absorb lead into his system without consequences.
"There's been a young sarsebox making inquiry arter you, missis," said this artist, striving with a lump of putty that no incorporation could ever persuade to become equal to new. He was making it last out, not to get another half-a-pound just yet a while. "Couldn't say his name, but I rather fancy he belongs in at the end house."
Aunt M'riar identified the description, and went up to her room wondering why that young Micky had been asking for her. Uncle Moses was away, presumably at The Sun. She busied herself in endeavours to reinstate her sleeping-quarters. Disheartening work!--we all know it, this circumventing of Chaos. Aunt M'riar worked away at it, scrubbed the floor and made the bed, taking the dryness of the sheets for granted because it was only her and not Dolly to-night, and she could give them a good airing in the kitchen to-morrow. The painter-and-glazier, without, painted and glazed; maintaining a morose silence except when he imposed its observance also on a boy who was learning the trade from him very gradually, and suffering from _ennui_ very acutely. He said to this boy at intervals:--"You stow that drumming, young Ebenezer, and 'and me up the turps"--or some other desideratum. Which suspended the drumming in favour of active service, after which it was furtively resumed.
Uncle Mo evidently meant to be back late. The fact was, his home had no attraction for him in the absence of his family, and the comfort of The Sun parlour was seductive. Aunt M'riar's visit was unexpected, as she had not written in advance. So when the painter-and-glazier began to prepare to leave his tins and pots and brushes and graining-tools behind him till he could make it convenient to call round and fetch them, Aunt M'riar felt threatened by loneliness. And when he finally took his leave, with an assurance that by to-morrow morning any person so disposed might rub his Sunday coat up against _his_ day's work, and never be a penny the worse, Aunt M'riar felt so forsaken that she just stepped up the Court to hear what she might of its news from Mrs.
Ragstroar, who was momentarily expecting the return of her son and husband to domestic dulness, after a commercial career out Islington way. They had only got to stable up their moke, whose home was in a backyard about a half a mile off, and then they would seek their Penates, who were no doubt helping to stew something that smelt much nicer than all that filthy paint and putty.
"That I could not say, ma'am," said Mrs. Ragstroar, in answer to an inquiry about the object of Micky's visit. "Not if you was to offer five pounds. That boy is Secrecy Itself! What he do know, and what he do not know, is 'id in his 'art; and what is more, he don't commoonicate it to neither me nor his father. Only his great-aunt! But I can send him round, as easy as not."
Accordingly, about half an hour later, when Aunt M'riar was beginning to wonder at the non-appearance of Uncle Mo, Master Micky knocked at her door, and was admitted.
"'Cos I've got a message for you, missis," said he. He accepted the obvious need of his visit for explanation, without incorporating it in words. "It come from that party--party with a side-twist in the mug--party as come this way of a Sunday morning, askin' for old Mother Prichard--party I see in Hy' Park along of young Dave...."
Aunt M'riar was taken aback. "How ever come you to see more of _him_?"
said she. For really this was, for the moment, a greater puzzle to her than why, being seen, he should send _her_ a message.
Micky let the message stand over, to account for it. "'Cos I did see him, and I ain't a liar. I see him next door to my great-aunt, as ever is. Keep along the 'Ammersmith Road past the Plough and Harrow, and so soon as ever you strike the Amp'shrog, you bear away to the left, and anybody'll tell you The Pidgings, as soon as look at you. Small 'ouse, by the river. Kep' by Miss Horkings, now her father's kicked. Female party." This was due to a vague habit of the speaker's mind, which divided the opposite sex into two genders, feminine and neuter; the latter including all those samples, unfortunate enough--or fortunate enough, according as one looks at it--to present no attractions to masculine impulses. Micky would never have described his great-aunt as a female party. She was, though worthy, neuter beyond a doubt.
Aunt M'riar accepted Miss Hawkins, without further analysis. "_She_ don't know me, anyways," said she. "Nor yet your Hyde Park man, as far as I see. How come he to know my name? Didn't he never tell you?" She was incredulous about that message.
"He don't know nobody's name, as I knows on. Wot he said to me was a message to the person of the house at the end o' the Court. Same like you, missis!"
"And what was the message?"
"I'll tell you that, missis, straight away and no lies." Micky gathered himself up, and concentrated on a flawless delivery of the message:--"He said he was a-coming to see his mother; that's what _he_ said--his _mother_, the old lady upstairs. Providin' she wasn't nobody else! He didn't say no names. On'y he said if she didn't come from Skillick's she _was_ somebody else."
"Mrs. Prichard, she came from Skillick's, I know. Because she said so.
That's over three years ago." Aunt M'riar was of a transparent, truthful nature. If she had been more politic, she would have kept this back.
"Didn't he say nothing else?" she asked.
"Yes, he did, and this here is what it was:--'Tell the person of the house,' he says, 'to mention my name,' he says. 'Name o' Darvill,' he says. So I was a-lyin', missis, you see, by a sort o' chance like, when I said he said no names. 'Cos he _did_. He said his own. Not but what he goes by the name of Wix."
"What does he want of old Mrs. Prichard now?"
"A screw. Sov'rings, if he can get 'em. Otherwise bobs, if he can't do no better."
"Mrs. Prichard has no money."
"He says she has and he giv' it her. And he's going to have it out of her, he says."
"Did he say that to you?"
"Not he! But he said it to Miss Horkings. Under his nose, like." No doubt this expression, Michael's own, was a derivative of "under the rose." It owed something to _sotto voce_, and something to the way the finger is sometimes laid on the nose to denote acumen.
"Look you here, Micky! You're a good boy, ain't you?"
"Middlin'. Accordin'." An uncertain sound. It conveyed a doubt of the desirability of goodness.
"You don't bear no ill-will neither to me, nor yet to old Mrs.
Prichard?"
"Bones alive, no!" This also may have been coined at home. "That was the idear, don't you twig, missis? I never did 'old with windictiveness, among friends."
"Then you do like I tell you. When are you going next to your aunt at Hammersmith?"
Micky considered a minute, as if the number of his booked engagements made thought necessary, and then said decisively: "To-morrow mornin', to oblige."
"Very well, then! You go and find out this gentleman...."
"He ain't a gentleman. He's a varmint."