Chiswell stretched himself luxuriously.
“It don’t do to share other people’s anxieties,” he said. “Great thing in this world is to keep trouble off your own shoulders. Do that, and you may reckon you’ve done pretty well. How have you been getting along since—since—”
“Since you dropped me?”
“Mutual consent,” he argued, rather uneasily, “mutual consent.” Both looked out of the window for a time. “By the by, do you ever see anything of that chap Miller? You don’t remember him perhaps; he was in Grosvenor Gardens when last I heard of him.”
“I believe he’s there still,” she answered, examining the tips of her boots.
“When did you—”
“Oh, don’t bother me!” cried Miss Everitt sharply. “You’re always wanting to knoweverything about everybody. A nuisance, that’s what you are.”
“I’ve got no grievance against Miller,” contended Chiswell. “You’re doing me an injustice. Me and Miller are good friends enough. Last time I met him he gave me some information, and we parted on what I may call the most amicable terms. I shouldn’t at all mind,” he went on generously, “I shouldn’t object in the least to running across poor Miller again.”
“You needn’t call him ‘poor.’”
“I’m not using the term,” said Mr. Chiswell, “in a monetary sense.”
“The monetary sense, as you call it, is about the only one you possess.”
Noting that she tapped the side of her easy-chair and that her head trembled, he decided to say nothing more on the subject, reverting instead to the matter already discussed. In going over some of the circumstances he found excuse for increased content; the swiftness of his action, and the general dexterity he had displayed made his eyes grow round and bulgy. The dining-car attendant came through to announce that the first series for lunch was ready, and Chiswell said he would smoke onecigarette and then go along and see whether his services were required by Freddy. Miss Everitt rose, remarking that it would be well, perhaps, for her to ascertain, at once, whether she could be of any use to Emily.
They returned to their chairs in less than five minutes: one perturbed, the other calm.
“Well, of all the—” he spluttered. “What I mean to say is, what in the world is going to happen next, I wonder?”
“That’s more than either of us can tell,” remarked Miss Everitt composedly. “What I know is that I do want my lunch. Sight of food in the dining-car has made me feel hungry.”
“The two of them! The two of them sitting there at a small table opposite each other!”
“I caught sight through the glass door of the bill of fare,” said Miss Everitt. “The name of the fish I couldn’t quite make out, but there were côtes de boeuf rôtis, and poularde, and haricots verts—”
“They were sharing a bottle of Chablis together. And he—he’d placed his hand on the top of her hand. Did you notice?”
“Wonder whether they’ll give us an ice?”
Chiswell found a handkerchief and rubbed his forehead.
“All very well for you to sit there and talk about food; how do you know that now they’ve met and made it up, that she won’t get rid of you in the same way that he’s jolly well certain to manage without me?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied, with calm. “I’ve saved!”
“The amount you’ve saved, my girl,” he declared, “will last you for just about five weeks.”
“What do you know about how much I’ve put by?” she demanded.
“I can tell you the sum to within a pound. I can write it down now, if you’ll lend me a lead pencil.”
He scribbled some figures on the margin of his newspaper, and handed it across to her.
“Guess again!” she said.
“It isn’t a question of guessing,” he said. “I happen to know. Unless you’ve made a considerable sum within the last three months, that’s the exact amount.”
“You really believed, then, what Mr. Miller told you?”
The conductor came, and returned to eachthe green cardboard covers enclosing their tickets. Under the impression that Chiswell was still a blade, a chum, a jovial companion, the conductor aimed at him a cheerful blow on the shoulder, and the train giving at this moment a lurch, the action took something of a more aggressive nature. Chiswell blazed up, trying to disengage himself from his coat. Other passengers in the saloon looked around interestedly; Miss Everitt interposed and ordered Chiswell to behave himself, to remember that he was in the presence of ladies. The conductor apologised and went on; the French passengers remarked to each other that the English formed an excitable nation.
“Pardon me,” said Chiswell to his companion, “but I should like to know your facts. I should be very glad indeed if you’ll kindly place me in possession of the true circumstances. To put it plainly—here’s your pencil—how much have you actually got in the bank on deposit, or on current account at the present moment? That’s all I want to know.”
She struck out his figures and wrote underneath. Leaning over he gave a whistle of astonishment.
“My dear,” he said deferentially. “There’s been a misunderstanding, due to the interference of outsiders. It’s not too late to put it all smooth and right again, but at the same time I’m bound to say such conduct is altogether inexcusable. When I come across Miller, I shall tell him so to his face. Who asked him to come to me, and give me wrong information, I should like to know?”
“I did!” she remarked. “But I’ve just made up for it by giving correct information on another subject to my young mistress.”
Chiswell threw himself back in his chair, and gazed severely at the roof of the saloon carriage.
“All I can say is,” he declared, “it’s absolutely ruined my lunch.”
Halfthe time I don’t trouble to look up at them, especially when I happen to be busy. They put their money underneath the brass wire; they ask for what they want; it’s given to them, and off they go. If any other plan was adopted we should never get through the work at our office, and there would be complaints to answer, and the superintendent might send some one along to kick up a row. As Miss Maitland says, when all the customers are made on one pattern everything will be much easier to manage; meanwhile we can’t do better than to do the best we can, and to recognise that some are in a hurry, some are just the reverse.
“Above all,” mentioned Miss Maitland, when I first came here, “no carrying on across the counter with young gentlemen.”
“When you’ve known me longer, Miss Maitland,” I said, “you’ll see how unnecessary it is to make a remark like that.”
“I’m only warning you for your own good.”
“I can behave myself,” I said, “as well as most girls. The fact that I’m a bit above the average in regard to looks—”
“Is that really a fact?” inquired Miss Maitland.
The very queer thing about it all was that he came in on the afternoon of the very second day I was there. I was having an argument about a halfpenny with a lady sending a telegram, and she said that she always understood we were well paid, and if that was true we ought not to try to make anything extra. I kept my temper, but I daresay I managed to say what I wanted to say—I generally do—and eventually she took the telegram back and decided to take a cab to Charing Cross and send it from there.
“Shilling’sworth of your best stamps,” he requested; “I want them to match my necktie.”
“Pennies or halfpennies?” I asked. You can understand I wasn’t in the mood for nonsense just then.
“Which are most fashionable just now, miss? I don’t want to look odd or conspicuous.”
“You’ll do that in any case. Kindly say what you want.”
“Perhaps I’ll try sixpennyworth of each,” he said.
I tore them off and pushed them underneath the trellis.
“Are these absolutely fresh? I may not be cooking them at once, you see. They’ll be all right, I suppose, if I keep them on ice?”
“You may as well put your head there at the same time,” I said.
The other girls on my side of the counter looked around, and Miss Maitland gave a cough.
“Heavens!” he said, putting on a deep voice, “how I adore the fair creature! Ere yonder sun sinks to its rest she must, she shall, be mine.”
I glanced up at him, prepared to give him such a haughty look, but I found he was a good-tempered-looking young fellow with his straw hat tipped to the back of his head, and somehow I couldn’t manage my cold stare quite so well as usual. Two or three peopleentered through the swing doors at that moment and came straight to my part of the counter.
“Very well then,” he said loudly, “that’s arranged. Outside the British Museum Tube Station half-past eight to-night. Mind, I shan’t wait more than ten minutes.”
The fuss Miss Maitland made just because I’d answered him back! I had a good mind to say something about old maids, but I stopped it just in time; instead I thought it the best plan to say he was a great friend of my brother’s and that he was one of those peculiar young gentlemen who had the impression that he ought to keep up his reputation for being comic.
“If he comes in again,” said Miss Maitland, “call me, and I’ll show you how to deal with him.”
The next day at about the same time I noticed out of the corner of my eye his lordship at the doors. He came in and I knew he was looking for me; to please Miss Maitland I went along to deal with some registered letters; she left her stool and took my place. “Now,” I said to myself, “now he’ll get his head bitten off.” I was engaged with work for about fiveminutes, and to my surprise, when I had finished, there was Miss Maitland chatting away with him as amiably as possible. “I like to go somewhere fresh every year,” she was saying. “That’s why I went to Windermere last summer.” He said, “Not in July by any chance?” and she said, “Yes, the middle of July.” It appeared he had been there at that date; not exactly Windermere but at Bowness, and he remarked—talking to her in a very different way from the one he had adopted with me—that it would have greatly improved his holiday if he had been so fortunate as to meet her. Maity gave a sort of smile and was about to make some further remark when he took out his watch, lifted his straw hat, hurried away.
“Really,” she said to me, still flushed with the conversation and looking quite young, “really a very well-spoken gentleman. Depends a good deal on how we approach them. If they think we want silly talk, why naturally enough they give it. In a general way,” concluded Maity, as though she possessed a wide and considerable experience, “in a general way men treat us as we deserve to be treated.”
He came in again that afternoon to use thetelephone; the box was occupied and he had to wait. We were all watching to see how he would behave this time; lo and behold if he didn’t take a big book from underneath his arm called The Horse and his Health and read carefully, taking no notice of any of us. Maity looked disappointed, and one of the girls said the great drawback about men was that they were never twice alike.
That was the evening I found him waiting outside. It always rains when I leave my umbrella at home, and I couldn’t very well refuse his offer to see me into the motor omnibus, and it was certainly kind of him to suggest that I should take his gamp. I told him that the bus took me within a minute and a half of mother’s house.
At the time I was in the habit of telling mother everything, and she decided—not often she praised me—that I had behaved in a ladylike manner, and mentioned it would be a good thing if every mother brought up children as she had treated me. Mother told me about one or two half-engagements that occurred before she married poor father, and gave me one piece of advice which she said was worth its weight in gold, namely, that themoment you saw a young man getting fond of you the best plan was to pretend to be indifferent and in this way to make him see that there was a lot of hard work in front of him. Mother said this three times to impress it on my memory.
How in the world he found out the name it was not easy to see, but, as every one is aware, people spare themselves no trouble when they become fond of anybody. However that may be, the fact remains that a letter came, signed W. J. C., saying the writer would be at the statue on a certain day and at a certain hour, and, just for fun, I kept the appointment. Maity was very nice about giving me leave, and I waited there ten minutes. For a full ten minutes nothing happened, and I had to look at the omnibuses as they stopped in order to pretend I wanted to catch one of them. Presently I caught sight of him looking in a newspaper shop, and taking his time over it too. I became so mad that if there had been a pebble about I think I should have picked it up and thrown it at him. He turned, and I had to wave my muff in order to gain his attention.
“Hullo,” he said, coming across. “Takingup express messenger-boy work? Where’s your parcel?”
“I came here,” I said coldly, “because I was asked to do so, and for no other reason. I’ve no desire to be made to look like an idiot.”
“Plenty of easier tasks than that,” he mentioned. “I should reckon you were one of the most sensible girls going.”
“People say that about a lady when they can’t think of any other compliment to pay her.”
“Are you waiting for anybody, I wonder?”
“I wish you wouldn’t try to make jokes.”
“My dear girl,” he cried, and he seemed greatly concerned, “please forgive me. And now that we’re here, what shall we do?” He looked around, glanced at his watch, and sighed. “Come along and see a bioscope show.”
We caught a bus and went to one of the swell places in Oxford Street; I couldn’t help feeling pleased when I noticed that he paid eighteenpence each for seats. You can say what you like, and you can talk about the joys of being independent, but there’s something very gratifying in discovering for the first time that a gentleman is willing to takeyour ticket for you. Of course the place was all darkened whilst the pictures were going on, and I thought perhaps he would try to take my hand, and I was prepared to give him a pretty sharp remark if he did; but nothing happened, and I couldn’t make it out at all. It was nothing like what I’d read in books; nothing like what other girls had told me.
“You seem a very comfortable set in your office,” he said when the lights went up. “All on good terms with each other, aren’t you?”
“I suppose so,” I answered. “It’s my first experience, you see. What age do you think I am?”
“I should say that you are young enough to be pleased if I guessed you to be older than you really are. Shall we say nineteen?”
“Eighteen next birthday, and that’s on Tuesday of next week.” (There’s nothing like giving a hint.)
“What have you been doing all these eighteen years?”
“Improving myself,” I said.
“You can give that up now you are perfect.”
The lights went down again, and there was set of pictures about a girl who was being loved by two gentlemen—one rather plainwith plenty of money and the other much better-looking but apparently only a clerk. I thought over his last remark and tried to discover whether he was still joking or whether he really meant it—if he did mean it it was a very gratifying thing to be said, especially in view of the fact that mother is generally finding fault with me. She has often said that I’m the worst girl in the world for leaving my shoes about and not putting a book away when I have done with it, and all this going on day after day, week after week, had given me a kind of a lurking suspicion that I wasn’t quite up to the mark. When the pictures showed that the plain man’s money really belonged to the good-looking chap he began to talk again and went back once more to the subject of the post office. I would rather he had spoken of something else; I wanted to forget Maity and the rest of them for awhile.
“Are many of them engaged?” he asked.
“Two of them say they are,” I replied. “I should feel inclined to guess it was only a half-and-half affair in either case.”
“Wonder what their names are?” I told him and he seemed relieved. “It’s very strange,” he went on, speaking in a moreserious way than usual, “how these affairs happen. Looks as though some one who exercises control jumbles all the names into two hats and picks out one from each at random and decides that they shall meet each other and fall in love.”
“A good deal of it is mere luck,” I agreed. “Mother met father at a dance at the Athenæum up at the end of Camden Road. Of course a steward introduced them, but to all intents and purposes they were strangers.”
“A man goes on,” he said, still thoughtfully, “fighting pretty hard and not giving much attention to the other sex and all at once he catches sight of a face, through, say, brass trelliswork, and instantly he decides ‘That’s the girl for me.’ And he thinks of nothing else, can’t keep away from the neighbourhood of her, and—” He put his hands over his eyes and bent down.
I felt sorry and I felt pleased if you understand that; sorry for him, pleased for myself—seemed as though I had done him an injustice. It showed that you could not reckon any one up correctly by their outside manner. At the first I had no idea he was anything but the ordinary chaffing sort of young gentleman,and here he was obviously upset. All very well for mother to say that you ought to keep them at arm’s length when they are fond of you, but I simply couldn’t help patting his sleeve gently.
“Thanks very much,” he said gratefully. “You’re a good little girl and I’m really obliged to you.”
There was a funny set after this, with a short-sighted old gentleman blundering over everything he did, getting mixed up with motor cars, carried up by a balloon, tumbling down the funnel of a ship, and finally being rolled out flat by a steam roller, and pulling himself together and walking off.
“Always feel sorry for people who have to wear glasses,” I remarked.
“It improves some people.”
“I don’t agree with you. See how peculiar our old joker looks at the office.”
He stared at me.
“Surely you don’t mean that Miss Maitland?” he said.
“Of course I mean that Miss Maitland. Who else should I be referring to?”
He pressed the palm of a hand against his forehead.
“Let us get this straight,” he urged. “We seem to be in a muddle. Your name is Maitland, isn’t it?”
“My name is Barnes. Up to the present.”
“Then that confounded new messenger boy took my shilling and mixed up the information, and”—he stopped and fanned himself—“and you received the letter I intended for her.”
“I wish to goodness,” I said forcibly, “that some of you men had got a little more common sense.”
* * * * *
Mother says everything in this world happens for the best, and in all probability there’s some one else waiting for me somewhere. Mother says I have plenty of time in front of me; mother herself was twenty-eight before she married. Mother says there is no need for me to feel nervous until I get past that age.
Hehad been away so long that few people remembered him, but his last exploit before leaving ensured that in the minds of those few he remained clear and definite. His wife, when she set out to meet him, was accompanied by a Reception Committee of three, and as they waited outside the large building where he had been staying for the last few months (his hosts kept several important establishments in various parts of the country and he had spent part of the time at one, part at others), as they waited, I say, under the avenue of trees well away from the front door—having, as a point of delicacy, no desire to be seen by the servants about the place—they speculated on the probable improvement in his personal appearance. Members of the Committee recalled precedents where So-and-so went away stout and unhealthy on avacation of similar length, and came back so trim and brown that his own sweetheart would not have known him had she remained in the neighbourhood.
“Here he is!” cried the wife suddenly. “I could tell him, bless ’is heart, in a thousan’.”
“That ain’t him!”
“He’s got a short beard, at any rate,” urged the wife, admitting her error grudgingly as the visitor was claimed and marched off by another lady.
“They all ’ave. Try to use your intelligence, why don’t you!”
“Well,” said the wife, pointing her umbrella at a sharp-eyed man, who, coming out of the large doorway, glanced around suspiciously, “well, at least that’s not my Jim.” The sharp-eyed man came across the open space towards them, still keeping a look-out on either side. “He’s mistaking us for his own people. My Jim’s a better-looking man than him.”
“If you say that again, Meria,” remarked the arriving man in tones that could not be mistaken, “I shall have to— Now then, now then! I don’t want no kissing!”
He was dressed in a suit for which he had not been measured, and his boots were scarcelya precise fit; he shambled along with his friends, responding gruffly to their polite inquiries and complaining bitterly—first, that they should have come to meet him; second, that so many friends were absent. Informed that some of these were no longer alive, he declined to accept this as a sufficient excuse, describing them as a cantankerous lot, ever thoughtless where the feelings of others were concerned. They stopped quite naturally at the first place of refreshment, and he criticised the beverage set before him, declaring that had he known beer could be so bad, he would not have worried his thoughts so much about it during recent years. He was equally dissatisfied with his first pipe of tobacco, which he had some trouble to light, and when he heard that his sister had married a respectable fruiterer, off Bethnal Green Road, he made no attempt to conceal his annoyance with the way the world had been managed during his absence.
“Once I turn my back for a moment—” he said disgustedly. “Who’s got the pub at the corner of our street?”
“I’ve moved, James,” explained his wife apologetically.
“Moved? Who told you to move?”
“The landlord, dear.”
“Don’t you begin ‘dearing’ of me,” he retorted threateningly. “Why wasn’t I asked?”
“There was no opportunity, James.”
“Bah!” he said, in the manner of one who can find no other repartee. He turned to the men. “What ’ave you three come all the way down ere’ for? On the make, I s’pose?”
“We are not on the make,” said the leader precisely. “Recollecting what you was put away for, we have come down ’ere to offer you, as something in the nature of a hero, a ’earty welcome on your return to what we may venture to term your ’earth and ’ome.” James relaxed the sternness of his demeanour, and took another sip from his glass, this time without making a wry face. “We’re a-going to make a fuss of you, old man.”
“Don’t go overdoing it,” he said grudgingly.
They reached Hoxton at about noon, not because the way was long, but because the Committee, possessing funds, desired to do the thing well. A neighbour had taken charge of the arrangements for dinner, and the three men, arrived at the door in Hammerton Street,mentioned gracefully that the reunited pair would in all probability like to be left alone for a few hours, and withdrew; first, however, warning James that he would be expected at the Green Man that evening at eight o’clock precisely, at which hour a few select friends would be present to wish him success in his future career.
“Whad ye mean by my future career?” he demanded. “What are you three a-getting at now?”
“It’s all right, old chap,” they answered soothingly. “Only a form of speech, you know.”
“Be a bit more careful how you pick your words,” he retorted threateningly. “I ’aven’t come back to be ragged by such as you.”
He was still rather surly that evening when he made his appearance at the Green Man; he explained to one who was formerly his closest friend that he had been enjoying a bit of a talk with the wife. Surroundings in the clubroom were, however, so congenial that before long he showed guarded signs of amiability, albeit he found grounds for annoyance in the fact that some of his old companions hadprospered, and had given up what was referred to as the old game to engage on sport that, relatively speaking, was of an honest, law-abiding character. His best friend indeed owned a large gold chain and a watch at the end of it; he was now a bookmaker by profession, not, of course, a literary person, but one who made money. On James suggesting they might perhaps go into partnership together in the racecourse business, the closest friend said, with some reserve, that it was an occupation requiring years of patient study, and the fact of James having been out of the movement so long barred him both from participating in the profits or sharing the losses.
“See what I mean, don’t you?” asked the bookmaker. “Chuck that what you’re smoking away, and have a real cigar!”
“I shan’t give you another opportunity,” said James curtly. “Should have thought you would have been glad of a pretty sharp man for your right ’and.”
“But you’ve been rusting,” pointed out the bookmaker. (“Now you’ve been and bitten off the wrong end.”)
Nothing, however, could exceed the genialityof the hosts. Thick crusty sandwiches rested on the deal tables; there was no stint, so far as the guest of the evening was concerned, in regard to liquids. Everybody crowded around him in a flattering way and everybody shook him by the hand several times; a few promising younger men, who were brought up and introduced, showed themselves highly sensible of the honour, and asked eagerly what adventure he thought of going in for next.
“’Aven’t quite made up me mind,” he replied cautiously.
The younger men winked knowingly at each other, saying that James was a deep one and no mistake, adding that an ability to keep one’s head shut was a gift to be envied. They had singing later. Songs were given which for James (who had no musical tastes) should at least have possessed the charm of novelty; the slang contained in them and in the public speech of many of those present was to him quite incomprehensible. They repeated unceasingly that they wished him well, and the bookmaker made a speech just before closing time in which he pointed out that every man-jack present was prepared to give James ahelping hand. Never should it be said of them that they had refused a helping hand to one of the best. A helping hand was due to such a hero and a helping hand he should have.
“Friends, one and all,” said James. (He refused for some minutes to make a speech, but gave in to encouragement.) “Friends, one and all.”
A cry of “So you said!” and reproving shouts of “Order!”
“I’ve been away from you fer a few year owin’ to—owin’ to circs not altogether under my control” (the room laughed uproariously), “but I’m back in the midst of you once more, and I can tell you one thing, and that ain’t two, I’m jolly glad of it! I’ve had quite enough penal to last me my time. I’m full up of it! I’ve reached me limit! It’s no catch, I tell you!” (Murmurs of sympathy.) “If there’s any one ’ere that’s acquired a taste for it, they’re welcome to my share. I don’t know that I have much more to say. I ’aven’t had much practice at public speaking of late. Once you begin to ’old forth in there” (here he gave a vague jerk of the head), “why, they let you know it. Anyway, it’s no use ’arping on the past, and in regard to the promise of a’elping ’and to which you, Mr. Chairman, have so kindly referred, and to me being a hero, there’s only one thing I want to say, and that is this: I shall keep you to it!”
The club-room seemed to think the last sentence had an ungracious sound, and there would have been an inclination to hedge only that the white-sleeved potman arrived at that moment with a dictatorial shout of “Now you cheps! Time!” and the party had to break up. Out in the street, James’s arm was again in request, and his hand was shaken so often with so many assurances of admiration and enthusiastic comradeship, that he went off towards Hammerton Street quite dazed and not sure whether he had won a battle, or saved lives from drowning. The men cheered him as he left and began to chant an appropriate song, but a policeman came up, and the crowd, not wishful for argument with the force, said respectfully, “It’s all right, Mr. Langley, sir; we’re just on the move,” and disappeared.
Womenfolk came round to Hammerton Street the next day asking to be permitted to see him, and James’s wife would have taken another day off, but James said there hadbeen quite enough gadding about for her already, and insisted she should go to work. He sunned himself at the front door with a fine pretence of not knowing that he was being observed, the while women on the opposite side of the pavement held up their babies to see him and whispered admiring comments.
“You’d never think it to look at him, would you, now?”
“I recollect his case as well as anything. It was before I was married to my present ’usband, but I can recollect it all just as though it was only yesterday. I remember so well saying to my young sister—I was on speaking terms with her just then—I remember saying, ‘Ah, well!’ I said. Just like that!”
“She’s kept herself to herself, mind you, all the time he’s been away. I will say that for her!”
“Wonder what he’ll be up to now. He’s turning something over in his mind, I lay!”
The hero could not help being pleased with all this attention, and after he had taken his dinner at a coffee-shop, where the waitress, informed of his distinguished reputation, stood back and watched him over an illustratedpaper, he put on a collar and again lounged at the doorway. The crowd was not so great now, and consisted for the greater part of children who played tip-cat, and gave no notice to him excepting when his presence interfered with the game. Disappointed with his audience, James went indoors and, taking off his collar, indulged in the unaccustomed luxury of an afternoon nap. When his wife returned from work it struck him that she was slightly more argumentative in manner than she had been on the first day; in the course of debate she threw out a most disconcerting hint in regard to a job of work, news of which had come to her ears.
“Look ’ere, my gel!” said James definitely. “You may as well understand me fust as last. A man with so many friends as I’ve got won’t want to work for many a long day yet.”
Nevertheless the idea gave him perturbation and he went round to the Green Man to meet the friends referred to and receive from them reinforcement of his hopes and views. There were only two or three in sight, and these were outside the house; they hailed him with a casual cry of, “’Ullo, James! Your turn to stand drinks, ain’t it?” andhaving brought some money out, the savings of his compulsory retreat, he found himself compelled to entertain them.
“And what you think of doing now, James?” they asked. (“Here’s luck!”)
“Well,” he said slowly, “I s’pose eventually I shall ’ave to find, as the missis says, something or other. But not yet for a month or two.”
“You’ll probably discover a chance of—”
“No,” said James with emphasis. “Not me! No more jobs on the cross for this child. Risks are too great.”
“But you don’t mean to say that you’re going to chuck it?” The men were so much amazed that their glasses remained in mid-air.
“If you guess again,” said James stolidly, “you’ll be wrong.”
He looked about in Hoxton the rest of the evening for friends, and looked about in vain. The next day he called on his closest friend, the bookmaker; the bookmaker was just off to Kempton Park and in peril of losing a train at Waterloo. He had heard, it seemed, of James’s decision, and James could trace no sign of the generous friendship previouslyexpressed. To James’s suggestion that he should accompany the bookmaker to Kempton Park, and enjoy a day at the other’s expense, the reply came prompt and definite. “That be ’anged for a tale!” said the bookmaker.
On the following Monday James went to ask about the job of work to which his wife had referred; all his worst fears were confirmed when he found himself successful in obtaining it.
“Drawback of being an ’ero is,” said James gloomily, “that it don’t last much more than about five minutes.”
“Ararerush whilst it lasts,” mentioned Mrs. Crowther, assisting in the task of clearing tables. “My dear husband used to reckon up how much we should be making profit in a year if, instead of being from twelve to two, it went on from what he called early morn to dewy eve.” She sighed. “Mr. Crowther had a lot of poetry in his disposition—much more so than most eating-house keepers in Millwall.”
“Did he make bits up out of his own ’ead?” asked the girl deferentially.
“Ethel,” said the proprietress, nursing a column of plates and speaking with resolution, “you’re new to the place, and you’re not full acquainted with the rules. Understand, once for all, please, that I don’t allow a word to be said against my late husband—nor whispered.”
“Here’s a stray customer coming in, ma’am,” remarked the assistant. “Give me that armful, and you see to him.”
A stout man, after examining the day’s announcement outside, entered and sat down with the relieved air common to those who have walked a great distance and to those who find in any form of exercise a source of trouble; he took off his hat, hung up his overcoat, and said, with relish, “Here comes the busy part of my day!”
Mrs. Crowther rested one palm on the table and gazed at the reversed notice on the window: “The Best of Everything and Everything of the Best,” giving him the space to make up his mind.
“You’ve got a nice little show here.”
“Not bad, sir,” she replied briefly. “What can I get for you?”
“Been all done up recently, too, if I mistake not. If it hadn’t been that I remembered it was exactly opposite the entrance to the works I shouldn’t have recognised it. Spent some of the ’appiest hours of my life, I did, over the way.”
“The steak and kidney pudding is off,” she said, glancing over his shoulder. Shetook the bill of fare from his hand and deleted the entry, returning the pencil to its position in the fastening of her blouse. Frowning at the impetuosity exhibited, he gave an order. She left, and returned with the liver and bacon and a basket containing squares of household bread.
“Any idea where my old friend Crowther is at the present moment?” he asked jovially. “Him and me were great chums in the old days that are past and done with.”
“He’s gone.”
“Where to?”
She pointed upward reverently.
“That isn’t exactly the place where I should have thought of looking for him.”
“What do you mean by that?” she demanded sharply.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, beginning to eat. “Only very few of us in this world, ma’am, if you don’t mind putting yourself out of the question, can be looked upon as perfect. My name’s Hards,” he went on, his mouth full. “Hards, with an aitch. Daresay you’ve heard him mention me. I’m speaking now of—what shall I say?—four, or it might be the early part of five. We were whatthey call inseparable, him and me, at that period.”
“Crowther gave up all his former companions when I married him.”
“He used to complain that you ruled him with a rod of iron.”
“I only wish,” she declared vehemently, “that the dear man was here to contradict you.”
“Crowther was the sort of chap,” said the other, with deliberation, “who’d contradict anything. Never better pleased than when he was arguing that black was white. I’ve known Crowther say one thing to a girl one minute, and another the—”
The customer found his plate snatched away, the remainder of his chunk of bread swept to the floor.
“Go off out of my dining-rooms,” she ordered. “Don’t you stay here another minute, or else I may use language that I shall be sorry for afterwards, and that you’ll be sorry for afterwards. There’s your hat, hanging up just behind you. Now move, sharp!”
The sleeves of his overcoat, owing to some defect in the lining, were difficult to manage,and this gave him time to protest. He had come, he declared, with no other intention than that of giving patronage to an establishment which he remembered, with affection, in the time of Crowther’s mother, and to enjoy a talk over the past; if, in the course of conversation, he had over-stepped the mark, no one regretted it more acutely than himself. A plain man, accustomed to speaking his mind, he often found that he gave offence where none was intended.
“Jack Blunt they used to call me over at the works,” he added penitently. “Owing to me having the awk’ard trick of always telling the truth!”
Mrs. Crowther so far relented as to call the new girl; she instructed her to attend to the customer the while she herself retired to the back to wash up dishes. Mr. Hards said in a whisper to the attendant: “Don’t seem to have quite pulled it off, first go!” and Ethel, also in an undertone, replied: “Mustn’t get discouraged, uncle. Mother always says it’s your one fault. Unsettle her mind about him, that’s what you’ve got to do.”
He read a newspaper after the meal, and sent to the proprietress a deferential inquiry,asking whether he might be allowed to smoke, and presently hit upon a device for securing another interview.
“Your memory seems not quite what it ought to be,” said Mrs. Crowther, following him to the doorway. “If I were you I’d see a chemist about it.”
“I should have recollected that I hadn’t settled up,” he declared, “just about as I was coming up from the subway at Greenwich.” He found coins. “No,” gazing at a shilling reverently, “mustn’t let you have that one with the hole through it. I was told it would bring me luck. Crowther was wrong for once, but he meant well.”
“Did that really once belong to my dear husband?” she asked, with eagerness. “Oh, do let me look. I’d give almost anything to be allowed to keep it.”
“Kindly accept it, ma’am, as a present from me, and as a kind of apology for the blunder I made just now.”
“I treasure everything he left behind,” said Mrs. Crowther tearfully, “since he went, last December, and I don’t know in the least how to thank you. Drop in any day you’re passing by, and let’s have another quiet chat;I’m never ’appier than when I’m talking about him.”
“My time’s practically my own,” answered Mr. Hards. “Since I retired from over opposite, owing to a slight disagreement years ago, I’ve done a bit of work, book-canvassing, but that don’t take up the entire day. So long!”
A few of the men came into the restaurant, after leaving the works; these were folk who had no expectations of finding tea or supper waiting at home, and they would have stayed on in comfort, gazing admiringly at the young proprietress, only that Mrs. Crowther offered a broad hint by instructing Ethel to find the shutters. They were drifting off, reluctantly, and one was saying to the rest that he would certainly make a dash for it (implying by this that he would make a proposal of marriage) if the lady were not so obviously devoted to a memory, when Mr. Hards appeared at the doorway, heated and exhausted by the effort to arrive before closing-time. With him a shy-looking companion, who had to be taken by the arm because he exhibited inclination to refrain, at the last moment, from entering. “Be a sport,” urgedMr. Hards. The other intimated by his manner that the task was, for him, considerable.
“Looking younger than ever,” declared Mr. Hards effusively. “How are you, ma’am, by this time? Still keeping well? Allow me to introduce you to my friend Ashton.”
“Very pleased,” said Mrs. Crowther with a nod. “What will you gentlemen take—tea or coffee?”
“Don’t suppose,” he remarked still in complimentary tones, “that we shall be able to tell any difference. Ashton, you decide.”
Ashton, looking around, inquired whether the place did not possess a licence; Mrs. Crowther gave the answer, and he said that perhaps coffee would do him as little harm as anything.
“Happened to run across him,” explained Mr. Hards, “and mentioned that I’d met you by chance, ma’am, and he says ‘Not the widow of silly old Millwall Crowther?’ he says. Just like that. Didn’t you, Ashton?”
Mrs. Crowther turned abruptly, and went to furnish the order. “Mind you say ‘yes’ to everything,” ordered Hards privately and strenuously, “or else I’ll make it hot for you.”
The two greeted Mrs. Crowther with frank and open countenances.
“The late lamented,” went on Mr. Hards, with a confidential air, “as you may or may not be aware, used to be in the ’abit of paying attentions to my friend Ashton’s sister.”
“I know all about that,” she remarked curtly. “It was before he met me.”
“And, realising how anxious you was to get hold of everything that once belonged to him, I persuaded him to hop off home and have a search. And lo and behold,” producing a small paper parcel from the inside pocket of his overcoat, “he found this.” Mr. Hards untied the string with deliberation. “There you are!” triumphantly. “Pearls from the Poets. And inside, his handwriting.”
“Not sure that I want anything that he gave away to another lady at a time when him and me were not acquainted.”
“The date’ll settle that,” said Hards. “Ashton, your eyes are younger than mine; what do you make of it?”
Ashton recited the entry with an emphasis on the date; Mrs. Crowther grabbed at the book, glanced at the writing, and sat downon the nearest chair, gazing steadily at a ginger-ale advertisement.
“Don’t tell me,” begged Hards distressedly, “that I’ve put my foot into it again. ’Pon my word, if I ain’t the most unlucky chap alive. If I’d had the leastest idea that I was going to be the means of disclosing to you the circumstance that Crowther gave away presents of this kind, and with this sort of remark, after he was married to you, why, I’d sooner—”
She started up with the book, and, selecting the fly-page, placed this between her eyes and the gas-light.
“Some one’s been altering the date,” she said quietly. She threw the volume across. “You gentlemen have got just two minutes and a half before we close for the night. And, as the business is doing pretty well, perhaps you don’t mind if I suggest you never show your faces inside here again.” She went.
“Any objection to me offering you a word of advice, old man?” asked Ashton, on the pavement. “You’re on the wrong tack. When a woman’s made up her mind, the best plan is to agree with her. What you ought to do—”
“Keep quiet,” ordered the other exasperatedly. “Can’t you see I’m thinking?”
They crossed, and walked beside the blank wall of the works.
Ashton was again invited, in plain language, to preserve silence by putting his head in a bag. The lights went out in the restaurant opposite; on the first floor a match was struck and applied to the gas globes; the music of a pianoforte was heard.
“It’s a shame,” declared Hards, throwing out his arms emphatically, “a right-down shame for a nice-looking young woman of her sort to be left alone and neglected. Here she is, able to cook, able to play, very good to look at, and she’s no business to be left by herself.”
“Evidently she don’t want to be left with you.”
“You hop off home,” ordered Hards, “soon as ever you like, and take that book with you, and don’t you ever attempt to interfere again with matters you’ve got no concern in. Otherwise—”
His friend hurried away without taking the opportunity to hear the alternative.
Mr. Hards waited until his niece came outwith a letter for the post. A whistle brought her to him from the pillar-box.
“Who was it addressed to?” he demanded. The girl replied that she had omitted to look.
“’Pon my word,” he cried, “I seem to be surrounded by lunatics. Nobody’s got a particle of sense, so far as I can ascertain, excepting myself. No wonder I can’t manage matters as I should like. But, putting all that on one side, what I want now is another interview with her.”
“Judging by what she said after you left, you’re not likely to get it.”
“Look here, my girl. It was your own mother’s suggestion at the start, and she won’t be best pleased if you make yourself a stumbling-block. She, for some reason, seems to have got tired of me living in her house at Greenwich, and it was her idea I should marry well, and settle down somewhere else. Apart from which, I’ve arrived at a time of life when I need a woman’s care and good feeding, and enough money in my pocket to stand treat to friends after they’ve stood treat to me.” He spoke distinctly. “I’m going to knock at that door over there presently, and you’ve got to let me in, and you can stand by andlisten whilst I say a few words, and put it all on a proper footing.”
“But she hates the very sight of you.”
“The sort of sensation,” he declared, “that can soon be turned to love.”
Mr. Hards thought it wiser, on finding himself outside the door of the restaurant, to give a sharp double knock. He smiled contentedly on hearing young Mrs. Crowther’s voice call out: “It’s all right, Ethel. Only the postman. I’ll answer him!” She opened the door, and faced him with a look of expectancy that at once vanished.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, taking off his hat, “but I’ve been speaking my mind to that young fellow, and he asked me to call back and apologise on his behalf. I never noticed what he’d been up to, altering that date; it wanted a lady’s sharpness and a lady’s intelligence to detect that. What he wants me to say is he acted on the impulse of the moment.”
“He’d better give up acting altogether,” she remarked. “Did you really know my husband well, or was it all gas?”
“Didn’t I never tell you about that affair poor Crowther and me had with a bobby downnear the London Docks one night in November? A fine chap,” went on Hards reminiscently, “if ever there was one. The way he could put up his dooks whenever there was trouble about! I seldom met a fellow who was his equal. He was what I call a manly man. When they told me he’d gone and left you a widow I cried like a child, I did.”
“I was upset at the time,” remarked Mrs. Crowther, “but it soon wore off.”
“It’s often struck me,” he went on, surprised, “that perhaps you didn’t appreciate him at his true value whilst he was alive. Very likely you don’t know, as I know, the way he used to talk about you behind your back.”
“If it was anything like the way he talked in front of my face, I’d rather not hear.”
“Anyway, I daresay, ma’am, you often find yourself looking about for his successor?”
“To tell you the truth, I do.”
He tried to take her hand, but failed.
“I can see him now,” he remarked sentimentally. “We was walking together in Stratford Broadway, and suddenly he turned to me and he says, ‘Ernest,’ he says, ‘something seems to tell me I’m not long for thisworld. I want you to make me a promise,’ he says. ‘If anything amiss happens to me, I look to you to be a friend to the wife. And if so be,’ he says, with a sort of a kind of a break in his voice, ‘if so be as you should take a fancy to her, and she should take a fancy to you, nothing would give me more pleasure looking down on you both,’ he says, ‘than to—’”
“Bequeathed me to you, did he?”
“It amounts to that, ma’am.”
“All this is news to me,” she remarked. “About what date was it?”
“About what date?” echoed Hards, rubbing his chin. “I can give it you within a very little. It was the night before I met William Humphries, and him and me had a few friendly words about football, and I was in the horspital for three weeks. That was the early part of December. I think it was December you said that poor Crowther drew his last breath. Must have been only a few days—three at the utmost—that he had his talk with me.”
“That seems strange.”
“Strange things do occur in this world.”
“Because Crowther was laid up in his last illness for four months inside this house, andnever went outside until the undertaker’s man carried him. And a pretty tidy nuisance he was, too, then, and, in fact, all the time I was married to him. Is that a constable-coming along, or a postman?”
Hards, having ascertained that the approaching man did not represent the law, remained, searching his mind busily. The postman stopped, gave Mrs. Crowther a letter with a foreign postmark, and remarked that the evening was fine.
“His ship will be home here within a fortnight,” she cried excitedly, glancing at the first words of the communication. “Two weeks from to-day.”
“Who?”
“Nobody you know,” said Mrs. Crowther. “And then we shall be married, and I shan’t have to keep the men at the works off by pretending to be so fond of my first. It’s taken a bit of doing. Let me think, now. You want to see Ethel, I expect, don’t you?”
“I don’t want to see no one,” he declared with an emphatic gesture, “no one on this side of the river ever again, so long as I jolly well live!”
“Knewyou’d like it, dear,” said Mr. Gleeson confidently. “I declared the moment I saw the place, ‘Now this,’ I said to myself, ‘this will suit the dear wife down to the ground.’ Just look at that bit over there. (Wait a moment, driver.) Isn’t that simply—”
He gave a gesture which meant that the English language provided no adequate words. His wife, with one hand upon his shoulder, offered an “Ah!” of content.
“You must paint this,” he went on, recovering powers of speech. “You must bring your easel and your white umbrella some morning when I’m busy, and try to get this effect. See the top of the church spire above the trees?”
“That there’s a oast house,” interrupted the driver.
“You will not forget that I shall have myduties in the village,” she reminded him. “We are going to make life brighter, you know, for everybody.”
“True!” he admitted. “It will require discretion.”
“And diplomacy.”
“Still, we’re not exactly amateurs. We bring something like a ripe experience to the task. This will be child’s play after London. Think of the difference in numbers. Driver, how many inhabitants are there in Murford Green?”
“Can’t say as I ever counted ’em.”
“But speaking approximately.”
“Well,” said the driver, with deliberation, “speaking approximately, I should say they was no better than they ought to be. And you’ll excuse me, but I’ve got to get back to meet the five-eight, and if you and your lady could give me what you may call permission to go on now without any more pulling up, I shall jest do it. Otherwise I shan’t, and then Miss Bulwer won’t let me never hear the last of it. That’s what she won’t!”
“Who is Miss Bulwer?”
“Look ’ere,” argued the driver, halfturning in his seat. “I’ve answered a pretty tidy number of questions sence we started from the railway station, and I’m beginning to lose my voice, and I’m not far off from losing my temper. But in reference to your question concerning, or regarding, or affecting Miss Bulwer, my answer is, you’ll jolly soon find out! Is that good enough for you, or isn’t it?”
“Merely a surface manner,” explained Mr. Gleeson, as the open fly trundled on again. “You don’t know these people, my dear. A certain veneer of brusqueness, but underneath that good pure gold. Simple natures, I admit, but as honest and straightforward—Wonder,” dropping his voice, “wonder how much he expects for this journey?”
“Pay him well,” suggested young Mrs. Gleeson, also in a whisper. “We must make a good impression at the start. Say eighteen-pence.”
“Fortunately,” resuming ordinary tones, “both you and I will be protected and saved by our keen sense of humour.” He smiled. “I expect our arrival will flutter Murford Green pretty considerably. On an even surface the slightest ripple shows.”
Both stood up in the open carriage on finding that the prophecy seemed to receive full justification. Twenty or thirty men and lads were rushing across the triangle of green, shouting wildly; in their hands they carried stout hammers and long-handled axes; women cheered from doorways of cottages. A few were distracted temporarily by sight of the station fly, but, reproved by the others, they went on, atoning for the slight delay by shrieking more loudly than the rest.
“Anything on, driver?”
“Something coming off,” answered the man. “I said what’d ’appen when people began to lock up gates that’d been open for gen’rations and gen’rations. I warned ’em, but they wouldn’t take no notice. And I ain’t of’en wrong, neither,” concluded the driver.
“Don’t be frightened, dear,” urged Mr. Gleeson. “I’ll go out presently and set it to rights. One wise word from an impartial person, and it will all be over.”
The driver said at the destination that, times without number, he had received three and six for the service, paid willingly; if the gentleman had no more silver he supposed he would have to be content with three shillings.In reply to contentions, the driver asked whether Mr. Gleeson was aware of the price being asked, at the present moment, for oats, and Mr. Gleeson having to admit that his knowledge on this subject was incomplete, the driver retorted, “Very well then, what’s the use of arguing? Why not pay up and look pleasant over it?” The fare obeyed the first part of this recommendation. The two maids (sent on in advance from Kensington) stood inside the gate, and caught the driver’s farewell remark.
“Really, ma’am,” said the elder primly, “the manners of these people! I thought I knew something about language, but I’ve learnt something the three days we’ve been down here. Had a pleasant journey? Me and Sarah have both been feeling humpish. I told her it would be all right soon as ever you and the master came.”
Mr. Gleeson set out, immediately after a meal, to arrange the question that was troubling Murford Green. He had changed into a Norfolk suit, and as a further concession smoked a briar pipe; with a thick walking-stick he prodded at dock-leaves on the green. Near one corner of the triangle a meetingwas being held, with a large-faced man shouting excitedly from a Windsor chair. Mr. Gleeson, crossing over, added himself to the audience.
“Well spoke,” sang the crowd, as the large man appeared to finish. “Very well putt!”
“There’s my shop ’cross there,” shouted the orator, pointing to windows that had “Crutchley, Butcher,” in marble letters overhead. “If any one thinks I’ve broke the law, that’s where they can serve a summons.”
The crowd looked around at the village constable. The constable frowned with the air of a man who had not entirely succeeded in making up his mind.
“We’ve got our rights,” the butcher went on, “and I defy any one to say the contrairy. If there’s anybody here who don’t agree with me, now’s the time for him to step up and express his opinion. Free speech is our motto and— What name, please?”
“My name is Gleeson,” announced the newcomer, “and I should like to say a few words.”
“For the agitation, may I ask, or against?”
“My attitude,” said Mr. Gleeson, “is that of a peace-maker.”
The crowd grumbled; the butcher called for order. Mr. Gleeson ascended the chair.
When, at the end of ten minutes, he stepped down, only the constable was there to give him a hand. The constable accounted for the dispersal of the crowd by pointing out that supper time was near, and on Mr. Gleeson asking whether he thought the words spoken had produced any effect, replied, cautiously, that it was difficult to say. The constable, as one who had looked on at many struggles, gave the opinion that you could not do better than let the parties fight it out and, this done, then possibly, but not certainly, came the moment for you to interfere. Mr. Gleeson felt bound, in reply, to mention that he had in his time been called to the bar; intimated that, in circumstances such as these, it seemed more fitting that he should give advice than take it.
“Now,” admitted the constable, “now you’re putting a different light, sir, on the matter. To tell the truth, I wasn’t quite aweer who I was talking to. I look on your arrival here, sir, as particular fortunate, because you can back me up in any action I see fit to take.”
“Any correct action.”
“That’s the only way I’ve got of doingthings. I’ve never yet made a blunder, and I don’t suppose now I ever shall.”
“We are all of us liable to err,” pointed out Mr. Gleeson.
“Being liable to do a thing,” retorted the constable judicially, “and actually doing it, is two entirely different matters. Shall I tell you, sir, what idea has just come into my head?”
Permission given.
“This is the way I get ’old of notions,” went on the other self-exultantly. “I may be walking along a quiet lane, or standing here, as I am now, and all at once they come into my noddle like a—well, more like a flash of lightning than anything else. It’s won’erful. Gives me quite a turn for the moment. Guess what the notion is that I’ve just thought of.”
The gentleman from London excused himself from making the attempt, and found his arm hooked confidentially by the handle of the policeman’s stick.
“I’ll bring over to your ’ouse this very evening two of the leaders of this movement, or agitation, or whatever you like to call it. You take down their evidence and to-morrowyou go and call on Miss Bulwer. She’s the lady who’s been trying to stop up this path. You talk it over with her, you do, and settle it, and then announce your decision. As easy,” concluded the policeman, detecting hesitation, “as easy as saying the A.B.C.”
Two days later the constable, on receiving news from Crutchley, Butcher, that the affair had been amicably settled, was able to state that the village could reckon itself once more in debt to him, and mentioned the case of a colleague at Middlesham who had recently been presented by grateful inhabitants with a bicycle. Later came information that Miss Bulwer had discharged her housemaid, with a month’s wages in lieu of notice; the driver of the station fly, in the course of a chat with his fare, ascertained the cause for her dismissal was that Miss Bulwer had understood her (the housemaid) to say, before the Londoner’s call, that she believed Mr. Gleeson was a bachelor, whereas the departing housemaid declared she had only mentioned that he was clean-shaven. All the same the decision of the arbitrator stood; Miss Bulwer was declared to be the owner of the right of way, but graciously permitted the inhabitants to use it.Few of the villagers had walked along the path before the locked gate was placed there, and no one showed any anxiety to do so now that it was thrown open.
“A most satisfactory beginning,” said Mr. Gleeson to his young wife. “Nothing could be more auspicious. Now, we are about to take up the task of breaking down some barriers on our own account. Your help, dear, will be specially needed.”
“I haven’t your tact.”
“You have something better, my love,” he replied gallantly. “You have charm. Together we ought to do a great work.”
“The place is beautifully quiet now,” she remarked.
“‘If there’s peace to be found in the world,’” quoted Mr. Gleeson, “‘a heart that is humble may hope for it here.’”
“The girls are complaining.”
“They will soon become accustomed to the village and its surroundings. It takes time for a Londoner to settle down. The silence,” he went on, going to the window, “is to me most impressive.”
“It appears to strike them as being dull.”
That evening, when the two were consultingthe local directory, taking down names and perfecting arrangements, a sudden uproar started near the open windows, and the servants came hurrying in to make protest against the noise; Mary and Emma urged that the master ought to go out and see what was happening. Looking through the open window the group could see that every man, every lad, every woman carried articles capable of producing clamour: some bore dustpans, some toy drums, some fire-irons. Mr. Gleeson felt able to give an explanation to the affrighted woman. It had, he believed, to do with bees; not quite certain about details, he felt sure it concerned bees—swarming or something of the kind.
“I don’t want to be stung,” said cook nervously. “Wasps always make straight for me!”
The crowd stopped at a house facing the green, and there the hullabaloo increased to such an extent that Mr. Gleeson, finding his cap, announced an intention of putting a stop to the row without further delay. The women expected the turmoil would cease directly he reached the scene; they observed that he spoke to one or two, remonstrating with them;the folk seemed to be making an explanation, and he again used argumentative gestures; they appeared to order him to go away and, after one or two further efforts, he retired. The uproar continued.