It is by a very surprising and extraordinary event that, from the abyss of wretchedness, irresolution and humiliation of the trial week at Tower House School, Mr. Wriford finds himself lifted to the plane of its extension by week and week of ever increasing stability and assurance; finds himself suiting Mr. Pennyquick; finds himself in a new phase in which there develop new emotions.
This event is no less remarkable, no less apparently cataclysmal to his position in the school and to the school itself, than a tremendous box upon the ear which, early in his second week, Mr. Wriford administers to a First Form pupil whose name is Cupper and whose face is fat and dark and cunning.
Morning school, very shortly after the Headmaster with a loud "WORK UP!" has left his class "for ten minutes," is the hour of this amazement. A week's experience of the new assistant-master has opened to the pupils unbounded lengths of impertinence and indiscipline to which they can go; and the door has no sooner banged behind Mr. Pennyquick than they proceed to explore them..
A favourite form of this sport is to badger Mr. Wriford with requests, and it is done the more noisily and impertinently by strict observation of the rule established in all schools on the point. At once, that is to say, Mr. Pennyquick having left the room, there uprises a forest of arms, a universal snapping of fingers and thumbs, and a chorus that grows to a babel of: "Please, sir! Please, sir! Please, sir!"
One "Please, sir" is that there is no ink, another to borrow a knife to sharpen a pencil, another to find a book, another to open a window, another to shut it. Mr. Wriford tries to pick out a particular request and to answer it; he calls for silence and is responded to with louder "Please, sirs!" He thinks to stop the din by ignoring it, turns his back upon the noise and cleans the blackboard, and this is the signal for changing the note to a general wail of: "Oh, please, sir!—Oh, please, sir!—Oh, please, sir!"
Master Cupper carries the sport to a length hitherto unattempted. Master Cupper rises to his feet and with snapping finger and thumb calls very loudly: "Please, sir! Please, sir!"
"Sit down, Cupper!"
"But, please, sir; please, sir!"
"Sit down!" and Mr. Wriford turns again to the blackboard. He is quite aware, though he cannot see, what is happening. He knows that Cupper has left his place and is approaching him with uplifted hand and persistent "Please, sir!" He knows that Cupper is close behind him and, from the laughter, that doubtless he is misbehaving immediately behind his back. He turns and catches Cupper with fingers extended from his nose. He does not know whether to pretend he has not seen it, or how, if he should not overlook it, to deal with it. His face works while he tries to decide. Cupper should have been warned. Cupper is not. Cupper's fat face grins impudently, and Cupper says: "Please, sir."
"Go and sit down," says Mr. Wriford, trying not to speak miserably, trying to speak sternly.
"But, please, sir!"
And thereupon, as hard as he can hit, stinging his own hand with the force of the blow, putting into it all he has suffered in this room during the week, Mr. Wriford hits Master Cupper so that there is a tolerable interval in which Master Cupper reels somewhere into the middle of next month before Master Cupper can so much as howl.
Then Master Cupper howls. Master Cupper, hand to face, opens his mouth to an enormous cavern and discharges therefrom four separate emotions in one immense, shattering, wordless blare of terror and of fury, of anguish and of surprise. Scarcely all the boys shouting together could have surpassed this roar of the stricken Cupper, and they sit aghast, and Mr. Wriford stands aghast, while tremendously it comes bellowing out of the Cupper throat. Then bawls Cupper: "I'll tell Mr. Pennyquick!" and out and away he charges, roaring through playground and into house as he goes as roars a rocket into the night. Fainter and more distant comes the roar, then, true to its rocket character, and to the consternation of those who listen, culminates in a muffled explosion of sound and in a moment comes roaring back again pursued by Mr. Pennyquick who also roars and drives it before him with blows from a cane.
Woe is Cupper! Cupper, for appreciation of this astounding sequel, must be followed as, hand to face, from assistant-master to Headmaster bellowing he goes. Blindly the stricken Cupper charges through the study door, slips on the mat, and blindly charges headlong into Mr. Pennyquick.
Then is the explosion that comes muffled to the listening schoolroom. First Cupper, shot head first into Mr. Pennyquick's waistcoat, knows that his head is lavishly anointed with strongly smelling medicine which Mr. Pennyquick is pouring into a tumbler from a very large medicine bottle labelled "Three Star (old);" next that his unwounded cheek and ear have suffered an earthquake compared with which that received by their fellows from Mr. Wriford was in the nature of a caress; next that with a bottle and a broken glass he is rolling on the floor; then, most horrible of all, that Mr. Pennyquick is springing round the room bellowing: "WHERE CANE? WHERE CANE? WHERE CANE?"
There is then a pandemonic struggle between Mr. Pennyquick, a cupboard, a cataract of heterogeneous articles which pour out of it upon him, and a bashful cane which refuses to emerge; and there is finally on the part of Master Cupper a ghastly realisation of his personal concern in this terrifying struggle and the part for which he is cast on its termination. Invigorated thereby, up springs Master Cupper, bawling, and plunges for the door, and simultaneously out comes the cane, and on comes Mr. Pennyquick, bawling, and plunges after him. Master Cupper takes three appalling cuts of the cane in the embarrassment of getting through the doorway, two at each turn of the passages, a shower in the death-trap offered by the open playground, and comes galloping, a hand to each side of his face, into the shuddering schoolroom, bawling: "Save me! Save me!" and leading by the length of the cane Mr. Pennyquick, with flaming face and streaming gown, who cuts at him with bellows of: "FLOG you! FLOG you!"
The circuit of the schoolroom is thrice described with incredible activity on the part of Cupper, and with enormous havoc of boys, books, forms, and blackboards on the part of Mr. Pennyquick. The air is filled with dust, impregnated with Three Star (old). Finally, and with an exceeding bitter cry, Master Cupper hurls himself beneath a desk where Mr. Pennyquick first ineffectually slashes at him, then thrusts at him as with a bayonet, and then, to the great horror of all, turns his attention to the room in general. Up and down the rows of desks charges Mr. Pennyquick, hacking at crouching boys with immense dexterity, right and left, forehand and backhand, as a trooper among infantry; bellows "WORK UP! WORK UP!" with each slash, and with a final cut and thrust at a boy endeavouring to conceal himself behind a large wall map, and a final roar of "WORK UP!" disappears in a whirlwind of streaming gown and flashing cane.
The schoolroom clock has not altered five minutes between the first roar of unhappy Cupper, tingling beneath Mr. Wriford's hand, and the sobbing groans that now he emits crouching beneath his sheltering desk. Yet in that period the whole atmosphere of Tower House School is drastically and permanently changed.
There stands in his place the assistant-master, momentarily expecting summary dismissal, yet, while to anticipate it he debates immediate departure, conscious that the whole room whose butt he has been now cowers beneath his eye and shudders at his slightest movement. There tremble on their benches the pupils who in this appalling manner have seen first the iron discipline of their assistant-master and next, most surprisingly and most horribly, his terrific support by Mr. Pennyquick. In the study there rocks upon his feet the Headmaster endeavouring to drown in Three Star (old) the memory of the exhibition he has given, and thinking of Mr. Wriford, in so far as he is capable of coherent thought, only in the aspect of one who must be implored to keep the school together while the outbreak of fury is explained and lived down by its perpetrator taking to his bed and his mother reporting a sudden breakdown.
Unhappy Cupper, it is to be remarked, martyred in his poor throbbing flesh for the production of this new atmosphere, is directly responsible for the several delusions on which it is in large measure based, in that he is firmly convinced that he told the Headmaster why he was come howling to his study and is assured therefore that it was the reason, not the manner, of his entry that earned him his subsequent flight for life paid for so horribly as he ran. The boys believe he made his appeal and, in the result of it, are tremblingly resolved to take any punishment from Mr. Wriford rather than follow Cupper's example of inviting Mr. Pennyquick's interference. Mr. Wriford believes his blow was reported and awaits dismissal for his loss of temper. And finally it is the belief of Mr. Pennyquick that Cupper made a wilful and groundless entry to his study and that he was surprised thereby into a violence in which (said he to Three Star [old]): "God alone knows what I did."
It is while the first onset of these thoughts pursue their several victims that Master Cupper, under terror of his own portion in them, creeps snuffling from his hiding-place to his seat; and to his own seat also, on tiptoe, very timidly, the young gentleman who had taken shelter behind the wall map. Mr. Wriford makes a sudden movement with the intention of leaving the Tower House before he is dismissed from it. A convulsion passes through the pupils. They glue their heads above their books. Immediately they are in a paroxysm of study, each separate minute of which surpasses in intensity the combined labours of any week the Tower House has known since its Headmaster was forced to take to medicine.
Mr. Wriford remains in his seat to watch this extraordinary scene. The hour of the recreation interval comes and goes. Not a boy so much as lifts his head. The close of morning school shows itself upon the clock. Not a boy moves. This is the serenest period Mr. Wriford has known since ever the train from London brought him here a fortnight ago. It is a grim eye he sets upon the devoted heads of his toiling pupils. He hates them. For what they have made him endure in these days he hates them one and all, wholly and severally. He has a relish of their desperate industry beneath his observation. He has a relish that is an actual physical pleasure in this utter silence, in this feeling that here—for the first time since God alone knows when—he is where he rules and is not hunted. He leans back in his chair in sheer enjoyment of it. He closes his eyes and delights that he is utterly still.
The luncheon bell rings. Mr. Wriford goes to the door and opens it and stands by it. Very quietly, file by file from the rows of desks, with bent heads and with the gentle movements of well trained lambs, the boys pass out before him.
He follows them, and, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Pennyquick appearing, presides at a meal over which there broods, as it were, a solemn and religious hush.
It is Essie who helps Mr. Wriford carry forward the advantage that Master Cupper has gained him. Mr. Pennyquick did not show himself throughout the remainder of the day. The expected dismissal for having struck Master Cupper—awaited in the grim satisfaction of grovellingly docile pupils throughout afternoon school and evening preparation—is deferred, therefore, as Mr. Wriford supposes, until the morrow; and in the morning he finds himself mentioning it to Essie.
He is the reverse of talkative with the Bickers household. The oppression that nightly he brings home from Tower House sits heavily upon him in the bright little parlour, intensified, as on his first evening there, rather than relieved by it. He always dreads the ordeal of the Bible reading. He always escapes to bed immediately it is over. At breakfast he has excuse to hurry over his meal and hurry from the house. On this morning, however, Essie comes to breakfast dressed in hat and jacket. She is going to spend the day with friends in a neighbouring town. She has to start for her train as Mr. Wriford starts for his work and, as his way lies past the railway station, "Why, we'll jus' skedaddle together," says Essie.
He cannot refuse. Facing the dismissal he anticipates, he more than ever desires to be alone; but Essie takes their companionship on the way for granted, and presently is chattering by his side of whom she is going to see, and what a long time it is since she has seen them, and appearing not at all to notice that he gives her no response. She is wonderfully gay and excited, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes even more radiant than commonly they sparkle. She has new gloves, which she shows him, turning the hand next him this way and that for their better display and announcing them "not half a bargain at one-an'-eleven-three, considering I never had this dress then to match 'em by;" and she has a linen coat and skirt of lilac shade and a hat of blue flowers in which she looks quite noticeably pretty; and she looks at herself in all the shop windows as she chatters and appears to be more delighted than ever at what she sees reflected there.
"Don't think I shall miss the train, do you?" says Essie. "Takes me a long time to say good-bye to Mother and Dad through not liking leavin' them alone all day. Don't think it's very unkind, do you, jus' once in a way, you know? You'd never think how I hate doin' it, though."
These are questions, in place of chattering information, and Mr. Wriford feels he must come out of his own thoughts to answer them. He chooses the first and tells her—his first words since they left the shop: "You've plenty of time. It takes exactly nine minutes to the station. I notice it by the big clock every day."
"Well, that's safe as the Bank of England then," declares Essie. "Plenty of time," and she takes advantage of it to stop deliberately for a moment and twitch her veil in front of a tobacconist's shining window. Mr. Wriford pauses for her, and she turns dancing eyes to him when she has settled her veil to her liking. "Isn't it funny, though, seeing yourself with pipes and all in your face? Let's have a laugh!"
He does not join her in the merry laugh she enjoys; and suddenly he is aware that she is regarding him curiously, and then that she is making the first personal remark she has ever addressed to him. "You aren't half one of the solemn ones," says Essie.
It is then that he tells her: "Well, I'm on my way to be dismissed. There's not much joke in that."
Essie gives a little exclamation and stops abruptly, her face all concern. "Oh, you don't say!"
"Yes, I do. Come on."
"The proper sack?"
"Come along. You'll miss your train."
"Oh, bother the old train!" cries Essie. "That's fair done it. I shan't be half miserable thinking of you."
"Why should you?" says Mr. Wriford indifferently.
She replies: "Well, did you ever! Me going off to enjoy myself and thinking of you getting the sack! Oh, that old Whiskyquick, he's a caution!"
"But there's no earthly need for you to mind."
"Why, of course there is," says Essie. "Especially with me going off on a beano like this. Of course there is. My goodness, I know what it is for a lodger when he gets the sack! Whyever didn't you tell us before—all of us? Then we might have talked it over, and ten to one Dad could have advised you. I've seen Dad get a lodger out of a mess before now. Just tell me. Whatever is it for?"
"I hit one of the boys."
Essie's eyes wince as though herself she felt the blow. "Not hard?"
"As hard as ever I could."
"Oh, dear!" says Essie reproachfully. "You never ought to do that, you know. Just a slap—that's nothing. I've fetched one of my Sunday-school boys a slap before now. But losing your temper, you know!"
"He wanted it," said Mr. Wriford.
"That's what you think," says Essie. "Well, never mind about that now. Just tell me."
He tells her. He finds himself less indifferent to her sympathy as he proceeds. He finds it rather a relief to be telling her of it—rather pleasantly novel to be telling anybody anything. He tells her from the moment of his blow at Cupper, and why the blow was struck, to the furious onset of Mr. Pennyquick, slashing among the boys with his cane—the humourous aspect of which he for the first time perceives and laughs at—and he finds himself, as he concludes, rather leaning towards the sympathy he expects.
But the sympathy is not for him; nor does Essie, who usually can see a joke in nothing at all, laugh at Mr. Pennyquick's wild gallop among his pupils.
"Oh, those poor boys!" says Essie. "Don't I just feel sorry for them!"
"You wouldn't if you knew them."
"Wouldn't I, though! I wish I had half your chance!"
He asks her impatiently, irritated at the unexpected attitude she has taken: "My chance at what?"
"Why, your chance to make them happy. Why, they're not boys at all. I think it every time I see them."
"No, they're little fiends."
"That's silly talk," says Essie rather sharply. "I daresay you'd be a fiend, for that matter, with that old toad of a Whiskyquick not to care what happens to you except to frighten you to death."
Mr. Wriford says coldly: "I didn't know we were talking about the boys. You asked me to tell you—"
"Oh," cries Essie, "don't you get a crosspatch now! I know it was about your sack we were talking, and I am sorry, truly and reely sorry. But, look here, I don't believe you'll get it, you know. I believe old Whiskyquick's that ashamed of himself he won't show his face for a week. An' I don't believe he even knows you hit that poor what's-his-name—Cupper?—so there! I believe he hit him for disturbing him, and I daresay catching him drinking, before the poor little fellow could speak. I do reely. Look here—"
They have reached the station and Essie stops outside the booking-office. "Look here, I tell you what there is to it. Don't you worry about the sack. Ten to one you won't get it till he's got some one instead of you, anyway. Just you don't worry. It only makes it worse, like when you're going to have a tooth out. You see if you can't make those poor boys happy. Why, you know, when I first had my Sunday-school class, oh, they were cautions! They'd never had any one to be kind to them, jus' like your boys. I told 'em stories, and told 'em games, and took 'em a walk every time, and showed 'em things, and you'd never believe how good they are now. You just try. I mean to say, whatever's the good of anybody if you don't try to make other folk happy, is there? Oh, there's my train signalled. Goo'-by. I shan't half think how you're getting on. I say, though—" and Essie, who has been extraordinarily grave in this long speech, begins to sparkle in her eyes again.
"Yes," says Mr. Wriford.
"You haven't got a minute to buy my ticket?"
"I'll get your ticket, of course."
"That's fine." She counts him some money from her purse. "Third return Wilton, excursion. Mind you say excursion. One and tuppence. Here comes the puffer."
Mr. Wriford says "excursion;" and then Essie, by hanging back as the train comes in, indicates clearly enough that she would like him also to find her a carriage. When she is in and leaning from the window she explains the reason of these manoeuvres.
"Thanks awfully," says Essie and whispers: "You know, I like people to see me with a young man to fuss me about."
Mr. Wriford's smile is the first expression of real amusement he has known in many long months. As the train begins to move he raises his hat. "Oh, thanks awfully," cries Essie, immensely pleased. "Remember what I said. I shan't half think how you're getting on. Mind you remember! Goo'-bye! Goo'-bye!"
He remembers. Mr. Pennyquick's manner at roll-call and prayers distinctly bears out all three of Essie's conjectures, and that helps him to remember. The Headmaster charges through the names and through the devotions even more rapidly than usual. At their termination he does not even indulge the pretence of taking Form One in a lesson. "Amen—WORK UP!" concludes Mr. Pennyquick and turns at once to Mr. Wriford. "Can you possibly take them all this morning, Wriford? Just for once. I absolutely ought to be in bed. I'm on the very verge of a breakdown. You saw what happened to me yesterday. I really don't know what I'm doing. The doctor insists on a little wine, but I'm fighting against it. Perhaps I'm wrong. But you know my principles. If you could just look after them till lunch." He strides to the door, opens it, closes it again, strides back and glares upon his pupils, strained over their books. "WORK UP!" and then more threateningly, more hoarsely than ever: "WORK UP! WORK UP!" and then to the door and a last "WORK UP!" and then discharges himself from view as abruptly as if Three Star (old) had stretched a hand across the playground and grabbed him out.
Thus are proved, as Mr. Wriford reflects, seated in the shivering silence that remains after the Headmaster's disappearance, two of Essie's beliefs. Mr. Pennyquick is obviously ashamed of himself—apprehensive of the results upon his boys and upon his assistant-master of his yesterday's exhibition and seeking by greater fierceness to coerce the one and by pitiable excuses to cajole the other; obviously also he projects no summary measures against Mr. Wriford—likely enough, indeed, is ignorant of cause of offence. There remains Essie's third premise: that the boys are wretched and to be pitied; and with it her advice that it is for Mr. Wriford to make them happy. He remembers. He looks on them, cowed before him, with the new eyes of these instructions, and for the first time since he has assumed his position here sees them, not as little fiends who have made his life a burden, but as luckless unfortunates whose lives have themselves been burdensome under one tyrant, and who now believe themselves delivered over to another.
He remembers. He remembers Essie's Sunday-school boys who were "little cautions" until she told 'em stories and showed 'em games and took 'em for walks and showed 'em things; and suddenly Mr. Wriford sits upright and says briskly: "Look here!"
There is a sharp catching at breaths all about the room, a nervous jump—a panic apprehension, clearly enough, that this is the prelude to repetition of yesterday's violence. It makes Mr. Wriford feel very sorry. He remembers Essie's "Poor little fellows. I don't feel half sorry for them." He contrasts their dejected and aimless and slipshod and now frightened ways with his own bright school-days. He gets up and steps down from the platform on which his desk is raised and stands amongst them, his hands in his pockets, feeling curiously confident and easy. "Look here," says Mr. Wriford, "let's chuck work this morning and have a talk. We ought to be jolly good pals, you know, instead of messing about like we've been doing ever since I came. When I was at school we used to be frightful pals with our masters. Of course we couldn't stick 'em in Form sometimes, but out of school they were just like one of us. They played footer and all that with us, and the great thing was to barge them like blazes, especially if one had had a sock over the ear like poor old Cupper there."
First surprise; then a nervous giggle here and there; then more general giggling; now all turning towards Master Cupper (very red and sheepish), and very cheerful giggling everywhere.
Rather jolly, thinks Mr. Wriford, and proceeds: "How is old Cupper, this morning, by the way? Cupper, you and I ought to shake hands, you know," and Mr. Wriford strolls down to Master Cupper, and they shake, Master Cupper grinning enormously. "That's all right. You and I are pals, anyway. You and I versus the rest in future, Cupper, if they get up to any of their larks. You were a silly young ass, you know, yesterday, cocking a snook at me behind my back. That's absolutely what you'd expect a Board School kid to do. What's your father, Cupper?"
"Please, sir, he's an auctioneer," says Cupper.
"Auctioneer, is he? Well, you look out he doesn't sell you one of these days, my boy, if you go cocking snooks all over the place."
Immensely delighted laughter at this brilliant flash of wit, and Mr. Wriford sits easily on Cupper's desk with his feet on the form before him and goes on. "You know, you're all rather young asses, you are, really. You don't work in school, and you don't play out of it. Why, hang it, you don't even play cricket. You're keen on cricket, aren't you?"
Enthusiastic exclamations of "Rather!"
"Well, you go fiddling about with rounders—a girl's game; and you don't even play that as if you meant it. Why on earth don't you play cricket?"
"Please, sir," says some one, "we haven't got any proper bats and wickets."
"Man alive," says Mr. Wriford, "you've got some stumps and a ball, and I've seen an old bat kicking about. What more do you want? Tell you what, we'll start right away and get up Cricket Sixes—single wicket, six a side. They're a frightful rag. We can get three—four teams of six boys each. Each team plays all the rest twice to see which is the champion. We'll keep all the scores in an exercise book and call it the Tower House Cricket League. I'll be scorer and umpire. Come on, we'll pick the Sixes right away."
Up to his desk Mr. Wriford goes amidst a buzzing of delight and gets a clean exercise book and then says: "Half a moment, though. We ought to have a Captain of the School, you know, and some Prefects—Monitors. The Captain will be my right-hand man, and the Prefects will be his. We'll vote for him. That's the best way. Each of you chaps write down the man you think ought to be the Captain, and then old Cupper will collect the papers and bring them to me, and we'll count them together."
It is done amid much excitement, and presently Mr. Wriford hails Abbot as Captain of the School, and up comes Abbot, loudly applauded, a red-headed young gentleman of pleasant countenance, to shake hands with Mr. Wriford and with him to select the Prefects. Three Prefects, Mr. Wriford thinks, and says: "I vote we have old Cupper for one."
"And Toovey," says Abbot.
"Right, Toovey. And what about Samuel Major? He looks a bit of a beefer. Well now," continues Mr. Wriford, thoroughly interested, "you four chaps had better each be captain of one of the Cricket Sixes. We'll pick them next. They must all be as equal as possible."
This takes quite a long time, but is satisfactorily settled at last and the names written down in the exercise-book and the first two matches arranged for that afternoon: Abbot'sversusToovey's, and Samuel Major'sv.Cupper's. Then "Good Lord," says Mr. Wriford, looking at the clock, "it's nearly lunch time. I vote we chuck it now and go and look out these stumps and things and find a decent pitch. Half a minute, though. You, Abbot, you know, and you three Prefect chaps must remember what you are and must help me to keep order and to see that no one plays the fool in school or out, and all that kind of thing; and you other chaps must jolly well obey them. This afternoon, for instance, we'll have a talk about work and see just where we all stand and make up our minds to work like blazes. Well, while I'm fixing up Form Three, you must see that Form One doesn't play the goat, Abbot, and you, Samuel, must look after Form Two. See the idea of the thing? Work is jolly interesting, you know, if you go at it properly, like I'll show you. Some subjects—like geography for instance—we'll take all together, and that'll be quite a rag. We're simply going to pull up our socks and work like blazes and play like blazes, too. See? Come on, let's get those cricket things fixed up."
Out they go. Mr. Wriford holding Abbot's arm, and other boys clinging about him—out to the field where first from the roadside he had seen them dejected and listless, and where now they run before him, keen, excited, eager, taken right out of their old sorry habits.
He, also, the first time in many months, out of himself removed.
Mr. Wriford goes back to the plumber's shop that night occupied with plans for developing on the morrow the interests of the Cricket Sixes, the Captaincy, the Prefects, and the new schedule of lessons drawn up during the afternoon. Essie is home before him, chattering more volubly and more brightly than ever by reason of her doings with her friends and her day-long desertion of Mother and Dad. She runs to the shop door when she hears Mr. Wriford and greets him eagerly.
"You never got the sack, did you?"
"No, he never said a word. I believe you were right about him being rather ashamed."
Essie does a little dance of joy and claps her hands. "Oh, if I'm not lucky, though!" cries Essie. "That was the one thing would have spoilt the fair jolly old time I've had, and there it's turned out A1 just like all the rest!"
Mr. Wriford tells her: "It's very nice of you to be glad about it."
"Why, of course I'm glad," cries Essie. "That's just finished up my day a treat! Now you won't half enjoy the things I've brought home for supper from my young lady friends. I was afraid—oh, you don't know what it is to have a lodger about the house when he's lost his job! They're fair cautions, lodgers are, when they've got the sack!"
And later in the evening, when he sees Essie sitting and looking before her with her eyes smiling and her lips twitching, she suddenly looks up, and catching his gaze, reveals that it is of him she is thinking. "You weren't half in the dumps, though, were you?" she says. "Isn't it funny, though, when a thing's turned out A1, to look back and see what a state you were in? Isn't it, though? Let's have a laugh!"
The morrow finds eager pupils awaiting Mr. Wriford, and eager work and eager play, and again in the evening he is returning to the plumber's shop occupied with the plans for the next day thrown up by these new developments.
So it is also on the following day, and so the next, and so by day and day and week and week. Interestedly and swiftly the time in these preoccupations passes. He is quite surprised to find one evening that weeks to the number of half the term have gone. Captain of the School Abbot brings it to his notice; and on arrival at Tower House next morning Mr. Wriford brings it, together with Abbot's reason for mentioning it, to the notice of Mr. Pennyquick.
Mr. Wriford knocks on the study door, waits for the "One moment! One moment!" which is called to him and which gives a chinking of glass in suggestion of the fact that the Headmaster is putting away the medicine bottles, exhibition of which, as an Open-air Man, is so distasteful to him, and then enters to find the Open-air Man lying, as usual, on the sofa, amidst an air that appears to have escaped from beneath a cork rather than have come from the window.
Mr. Wriford expresses the hope that he is better, Mr. Pennyquick the fear that he is not, and there is then brought forward the suggestion advanced by Abbot.
"Thursday is half-term," says Mr. Wriford. "Do you think the boys might have a holiday? They've been working very well."
"A whole holiday?" says Mr. Pennyquick doubtfully.
Mr. Wriford knows perfectly well the reason for the dubiety in the Headmaster's voice. In these days he has taken the work of the school entirely out of Mr. Pennyquick's hands. Mr. Pennyquick no longer so much as reads roll-call and prayers. Abbot calls the roll and is mighty proud of the duty; Mr. Wriford takes prayers. Mr. Pennyquick perhaps twice in a week will tear himself from his sofa and his medicines and suddenly burst upon the schoolroom, patrol a few turns with loud and quite unnecessary "WORK UP'S!" and as suddenly discharge himself again to his study.
The less frequently he appears, the more he shirks any scholastic duties with the neglect they entail of nursing his distressing ailments in the seclusion of his study. Thus it is the idea of having the boys on his hands for a complete day that gives this doubt to his tone when a whole holiday is projected, and Mr. Wriford, well aware of it, quickly reassures him on the point.
"Well, I think they deserve a whole holiday," says Mr. Wriford. "Of course I'd come up just the same and look after—"
"My dear fellow, a whole holiday by all means," Mr. Pennyquick breaks in. "By all means. Splendid! They deserve it. You're doing wonderfully with them, my dear fellow. My mother reports she has never known them so happy or so well-behaved. No ragging in the dormitories at night. Cold baths every morning at their own request. Good God, do you know I'm so much a cold bath man myself that I take one twice a day—twice a day winter and summer—when I'm fit. Clean and smart and quiet at meals. Perfect silence in the schoolroom. Keen, manly play in the field. Devoted to you. My dear fellow, you're wonderful. Whole holiday? Whole holiday by all means. I was going to suggest it myself."
"Thursday, then," says Mr. Wriford. "They'll be delighted. I thought of playing cricket in the morning and then, if you agree, asking Mrs. Pennyquick if she could fix us up some lunch and tea things in hampers, and we'd go and picnic all the rest of the day at Penrington woods and bathe in the river and that kind of thing."
The Headmaster thinks it splendid. "Splendid, my dear fellow. Splendid. Certainly. I'll see to it myself. Cricket! Bathing! Good God, you'll think it very weak of me, but I feel devilish near crying when I think of a jolly day like that and me tied up here and unable to share it. Cricket! Good God, why, when I was at Oxford I made nine consecutive centuries for my college one year. It's a fact. Nine absolutely—or was it ten? I must look it up. I believe it was ten. Bathing! My dear fellow, a few years ago I thought nothing of a couple of miles swim before breakfast—side-stroke, breast-stroke, back-stroke; good God, I was an eel in the water, a living eel. I'm an outdoor man, absolutely. Always have been. That's the cruelty of it. Hullo, there's the bell. I shall take prayers this morning, Wriford. I'm coming in all day for a real good day's work with the dear fellows. I don't know what the doctor will say, but I'm going to do it."
Mr. Wriford is at the door, and the Outdoor Man already stretching down an arm to feel beneath the sofa. "Perhaps not prayers," says the Outdoor Man. "You'd better not wait for me for prayers. I've just my loathsome medicine to take. Take prayers for me for once, like a good fellow, and I'll be with you in two minutes. Splendid. You're wonderful. Two minutes. Damn."
There is the sound of a bottle upset beneath the sofa, and Mr. Wriford hurries off to find Abbot already halfway through the roll, then to take prayers, and then, amidst tremendous applause, to announce a whole holiday for Thursday's half-term.
"Well, come on, let's make certain we deserve it," says Mr. Wriford, when the manifestations of joy have been sufficiently expressed. "Come along, Form Two, arithmetic. Let's see if we can't understand these frightful decimals. Clean the blackboard, Toovey. Abbot, you take Form Three behind the curtain and give them their dictation. Here's the book. Find an interesting bit and read it out loud first. Form One, you're algebra. You'd better take the next six examples. Cupper, you're in charge. Now then, Two, crowd around. Where's the chalk?"
This was the spirit of the lessons nowadays. Everybody worked. Nobody shirked. Interest, even excitement, was found under Mr. Wriford's guidance to lie in the hated lesson-books, and it was excitedly wrestled out of them. Some of the subjects, as Mr. Wriford taught them, were made exciting in themselves; the rest were somehow inspired with the feeling that the next chapter—the next chapter really is exciting once we can get to it. All the Tower House schoolbooks were horribly thumbed and inked and dog-eared in their first few pages—long indifferently laboured over, never understood, cordially loathed. Beyond lay virgin pages, clean, untouched, many sticking together as when fresh from the binder's press. "Look here," Mr. Wriford used to say, "these French grammars, they're all the same—all in a filthy state up to page thirty and rippingly clean beyond, just like a new story-book. Look here, let's pretend all that new part is a country we're going to emigrate into and explore, and that first of all we've got to toil over the Rocky Mountains of all this first muck. You half know it, you know. If we get through a good few pages every time we'll get there like lightning. Come on!"
They always "came on" responsive to this kind of call. The work in all the subjects belonged to the distant period of Mr. Wriford's own school-days. He had to get it up as it came. He brought to the boys the quite novel effect of a master learning with them as they learnt, and that produced the stimulus of following him in place of the grind of being driven. "My word, this is a teaser!" Mr. Wriford would say, frankly stumped by an arithmetical problem; and the delighted laugh that always greeted this was the impetus to an eager and intelligent following him when he would get it aright and demonstrate its processes. Wits were sharpened, perceptions stirred. Boyish high spirits, mental alertness, and vigorous young qualities were rescued from the dejection and apathy and slovenliness and ugliness that had threatened to submerge them: and Mr. Wriford finds himself infected and carried along by the moral quickening he has himself aroused.
He knows it. He feels it. He both knows and feels it because, whereas formerly he groped ever in darkness of spirit and beneath intolerable oppression of mind, now, when engaged in these occupations or when thinking upon them, he is lifted out of himself, and in the zest of their activities forgets the burden of his own tribulations. Thus what had been all darkness, all shrinking, all fears, becomes divided, as street lamps break the night, into periods of light while he is within the arc of these pursuits and into passages of the old gloom only between one day's leaving of the school and the next morning's return to it. Slowly from this he advances to stronger influence of the light, less frequent onset of the shadows. First by these lamps the measureless blackness of his way is broken. Gradually he is handed more quickly and more surely from lamp to lamp. Not often now, with their immense and crushing weight, their suffocating sense of numbing fear, those old and intolerable clouds of misery descend upon him; not often now those black abysses that yawned on every side about his feet; not often those entombing walls that towered every way about his soul. Sometimes they come. He, in the days of that nightmare hunted life in London, sometimes had known snatched intervals of relief—in companionship, in reading—in the midst of which there would strike down upon him the thought that this was but transitory, that presently it would end, that presently he would be returned to the strain, to the fears, to the darkness, to the panic bursting to get out of it. So now, sometimes, when his mind moved ever so little from its occupation with these new interests, he would be clutched as though immediately outside them clutching hands waited to drag him out and drag him down—clutched and engulfed and bound again in bonds of terror, as one whose pleasant slumber suddenly gives place to dreadful sense of falling. In the midst of his thoughts upon some aspect of work or play with his pupils, "This cannot go on always," he would think; "This will somehow come to an end sooner or later;" and immediately the waiting hands would up and snatch him down; immediately the fears oppress him; immediately the walls, the blackness come; and he would cry: "What then? Where then?" and grope again; and bruise once more himself on his despair; and plan to go away and abandon it all, so that at least he might of his own will leave these interests, not wait till suddenly they to their own end should come and he be driven from them.
So sometimes these old tumults came upon him; yet came less frequently, and the less frequently they came were with less suffering escaped. Now, in their onsets, was for the first time a way of refuge from them. Where formerly he had been utterly abandoned to them, sinking more and more deeply within them at every cry of his despair, now was a knowledge that they could be lost; and quicker and more strongly a conscious grasp at what should lose them and draw him out from their oppression. At first with dreadful effort and often with defeat, gradually with less affliction and with more certain hold, he would attempt to turn his mind from these broodings and fasten it upon his enterprises in the school. There was to be thought out a way of helping Form Two to get the hang of parsing in their English grammar to-morrow; there was the idea of starting the young beggars in a daily class of drill and physical exercises; there was the plan of rummaging among Pennyquick's books to pick out a little library of light reading for the boys and to read to them himself for half an hour each day; there was the thought of how jolly nicely they had responded to his proposal to go through their play-boxes and pick out all the cheap trash he found they had been reading, and of the jokes they had had over the bonfire made from the collection; there was the thinking of other ways in which this complete confidence they gave him could be used for their own benefit; there was—there were a hundred of such preoccupations for his mind, any one of which, could he but fix tenaciously enough upon it, would draw him from the quicksands of his depression and set his feet where strongly they bore him.
Thus came he gradually into a state in which the old depths of oppression troubled him no more; in which the apprehensive, hunted look went from his eyes; in which sometimes a smile was to be seen upon his face; and in which—to the observer—his outstanding attribute was just that he was very quiet, very reserved: gently responsive to advances from others but never of himself offering conversation. So may one newly convalescent after great illness be observed; and to this Mr. Wriford's case in these days may best be likened. As the convalescent, after long pains, deliriums, fevers, nights void of sleep, is carried to sit in the sunshine from the bed where these have been endured, so in this haven rested Mr. Wriford from his mind's distresses. There sits the patient, wan and weak, desirous only to enjoy the pleasant air, wanting no more than just to feed upon the smiling prospect his eyes that all the devils of his fevered brain have burned; silently acquiescent to ministrations of those who tend him. Here lived Mr. Wriford, quiet and reserved, no longer preyed upon by those fierce storms of hopeless misery such as, on the first night at the Bickers' table, had sent him torn and broken from the room; wearing a gentle aspect now in place of those contracted eyes, that knotted brow, born of the fever in his brain; hands no longer trembling; voice eased of its strained and rasping note that came of fear it should break out of his control and go in tears of his distress. There rests the convalescent's body, thin and enfeebled from its rackings on the bed. Here stayed Mr. Wriford, wanting only here to stay where refuge was from all the devils that had devoured him. There rests the patient, slowly replanning life that death had challenged, sickness shattered. Here lived he, quietly revolving what had brought him here and what should follow now.
Was there something in life that he had missed? Calmly now he could ask and search the question. Till now, since its first coming, it had been as a gnawing tumour, as an empoisoned wound within him—an inward fire, a pulsing abscess to relieve whose tortures he, as a wild beast thus maddened that turns its jaws upon its vitals, had bruised himself to madness in frantic goadings of his mind. Now he could review it calmly, almost dispassionately. The thing was out of him, no longer burning in his brain. Till now, he had thought upon it in frenzy of despair, now he could stand as it were away from it—turn it this way and that in examination with his hands, smile and shake his head in puzzlement, and put it aside to go to his duties with his boys, return and take it up and puzzle it again. Was there something in life that he had missed? Yes, there was something. He could unriddle it as far as that. He was at peace now, but there was nothing in that peace. Some attribute was missing. This was peace: but it was emptiness. This was quietness: but a thousand leagues remote from happiness. Happiness was an active thing, a stirring thing, a living thing, a warm thing, a pulsing thing. Barren here, cold here. Let the mind run, let the mind run about a thousand pleasures such as money could buy. They might be his for the asking. He had but to return to London, and they were his. Well, let the mind run. Back it would come disconsolate, empty-handed, with no treasures in its pack. Nothing attracted him. Ah, but somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, that thing was—the live thing, the stirring thing, the active thing, the warm thing. Something that he had missed in life: that was certain. Happiness its name: that was assured. Where? In what? How to be found? Only negative answers to these. Well, shake the head over it and put it away; smile and confess its bafflement. Here are things to be done. Do them and return to puzzle again in a little while.
So and in this wise quietly through the days—standing aside in this retreat and looking at life as one that, furnishing a room, stands to stare at a bare corner, and only knows something is wanted there, and only knows that nothing of all he has will suit, and only turns away but to return again and stare.
That simile of Mr. Wriford's condition in these days to one who, rearranging the furniture of his room, stares in constant bafflement at a bare corner and can by no means determine with what to fill it, may be advanced a further step. The decorator's eye, narrowly judging all the objects that are at his disposal, will in time, in a "better than nothing" spirit, turn more frequently to one, and presently he will try it: there came a time when it occurred to Mr. Wriford, dispassionately revolving the vacancy in his life, that there was one might fill it—Essie.
One day, and this was the beginning of the idea—not then conceived—Mr. Wriford asked Essie if he might take her for a walk. A Saturday evening was the day: a July evening, cool and still—very grateful and inviting after oppressive heat through morning and afternoon; a breeze come up with nightfall. There was no preparation class at Tower House on Saturdays. Mr. Wriford left his boys reading the books he had rummaged for them out of Mr. Pennyquick's library and came home to early supper. By eight o'clock Essie had washed up, and Mr. Wriford came to her where she was standing by the shop door enjoying the pleasant air.
"Isn't it jolly, though?" said Essie, moving to give him place beside her in the entrance.
"Yes, it's beautifully cool now," Mr. Wriford agreed.
Several young couples—man and maid—were passing in one direction up the street. Mr. Wriford watched Essie's face as she watched them. He could see her eyes shining and those little twitches of her lips as she observed each separate swain and maid. With the slow passing of one pair, their hands clasped, walking very close together, she gave a little squirm and a little sound of merriment and turned to him.
"Aren't they funny, though," said Essie, "courting!"
Mr. Wriford asked her: "Where are they all going?"
"Why, they're going to the Gardens, of course. There isn't half a jolly band plays there Saturday evenings."
She was the prettiest little thing, as Mr. Wriford looked at her, standing there beside him. He liked her merry ways, so different from his own habitual quietude. It occurred to him that, apart from that walk to the station together some weeks before, he hardly ever had spoken to her out of her parents' company. Why not?—so pretty and jolly as she was.
A sudden impulse came to him. He hesitated to speak it. She might resent the suggestion. He looked at her again—those funny little twitchings of her lips! "May I take you for a stroll, Essie?" he said.
There was not the least reason to have hesitated. Essie's face showed her pleasure. She quite jumped from her leaning pose against the doorway. "Oh, that's fine!" cried Essie. "I'll just pop on my chapeau. I won't be half a tick."
She was gone with the words, and he heard her running briskly up the stairs to her room and then very briskly down again and then in the parlour, crying: "Dad, me an' the lodger are going for a stroll in the Gardens. Sure you've got everything you want, Mother? Look, there's the new silk when you've finished that ball. Isn't it pretty, though!" and then the sound of a kiss for Mother and a kiss for Dad; and then coming to him, gaily swinging her gloves in a brown little hand, her eyes quite extraordinarily sparkling.
"There you are!" cried Essie, and they started. "That wasn't long, was it? Why, some girls, you know, keep their young fellows waiting a treat."
"Do they?" said Mr. Wriford, a trifle coldly.
"Don't they just!" cried Essie, noticing nothing that his tone might have been intended to convey, and beginning, as they went on in silence, to walk every now and then with a gay little skip as though by that means to exercise her delighted spirits.
Mr. Wriford, now that he was embarked upon his sudden impulse, found himself somehow dissatisfied with it. He would have been embarrassed, perhaps a little disappointed, he told himself, had she refused his invitation. He found himself embarrassed, perhaps a little piqued, that she had accepted it so readily, taken it so much as a matter of course. And then there was that "young fellow" expression with its obvious implication. His idea had been that she would have shown herself conscious of being—well, flattered, by his invitation. Not, he assured himself, that there was anything flattering in it; but still—. Perhaps, though, she was more conscious of it than she had seemed to show; and coming to that thought he asked her suddenly, giving her the opportunity to say so: "I hope you didn't mind my proposing to take you for a walk?"
Essie skipped. "Good gracious!" cried Essie. "Whyever?"
"I thought you might think it rather—sudden."
Essie laughed and skipped again. "Sudden! Why, you've bin long enough, goodness knows! Why, I've bin expecting you to ask me for weeks, you know!"
"Have you?" said Mr. Wriford.
"Think I have!" cried Essie. "Why, the lodger always does!"
"Oh!" said Mr. Wriford.
This time Essie seemed to detect something amiss in his tone. In a few paces she was bending forward as she walked and trying to read his face. "I say," said Essie, "you aren't in a crosspatch, are you?"
"Of course I'm not. Why should I be?"
"Sure I don't know. You wanted me to come, didn't you?"
"Of course I did. I shouldn't have asked you otherwise."
"Well, I don't know," said Essie. "Young fellows are that funny sometimes!"
Silence between them after that, but as they came to the Gardens Essie showed that the funny ways of young fellows had been occupying her in the interval. "Of course, you're always very quiet, aren't you?" she said.
"I don't talk much," Mr. Wriford agreed.
"Of course you don't!" cried Essie and seemed so reassured by the recollection that Mr. Wriford suddenly felt he had been behaving a little unkindly—stupidly; and with some idea of making amends smiled at her.
Essie flashed back with eyes and lips. "Of course you don't!" she cried again. "Well, I vote we enjoy ourselves now if ever. Just look at all the lights! See the funny little blue ones? Aren't they funny though, all twinkling! Let's have a laugh!"
With a laugh, therefore, into the Gardens; and with a laugh Mr. Wriford's unreasoning distemper put off. Jolly little Essie!
No need, moreover, to do more than listen to her, and to think how jolly she was, and how pretty she looked, as she turned chattering to him while she led the way among the groups clustered about the bandstand. "We'll go right through," said Essie. "There's seats up there where you can sit an' hear the band an' see the lights a treat. Jus' watch a minute to see that great big fat man with the trombone where he keeps coming in pom! pom! There! See him? Oh, isn't he a caution!"
Close to Mr. Wriford she stands, and Mr. Wriford watches her watch the fat gentleman with the trombone, her lips twitching while she waits for his turn and then her little squirm of glee when he raises his instrument to his mouth and solemnly administers his deliberate pom! pom! to the melody. "Oh, dear!" cries Essie, "isn't this just too jolly for anything! Come along. Up this path. I know a not half quiet little seat up here. I say, though! When you've been looking at the lights! If this isn't dark! Oo-oo!"
This "Oo-oo!" is expressive of the fact that really it is rather ticklish work suddenly being launched on a pitch dark path, falling away steeply at the sides, after the glare of the bandstand; and with the "Oo-oo!" comes Essie's arm pressing very close against Mr. Wriford's and her hand against his hand.
"Let's hold hands," says Essie, and her fingers come wriggling into his—-cool and firm, her fingers, and there is the faint chink of the bracelets that she wears. "I like holding hands, don't you?"
Cool and firm her fingers. His hand is unresponsive, but rather jolly to feel them come wriggling into it and then twine about it. She settles them to her liking, and this is enlocked about his own, her palm to his. Yes, rather jolly to feel them thus: they give him a curious thrill, a desire.
Essie's seat was found to be quite the not half quiet little place that she had promised. It stood at the termination of the winding path, backed by a high rockery of ferns and looking down upon the lights and the bandstand whence came the music very pleasantly through the distance.
Here were influences that touched anew the curious thrill her fingers had given Mr. Wriford. The warm, still night, the feeling of remoteness here, the music floating up, Essie very close beside him, her face clear to his eyes in this soft glow of summer darkness. A very long time since to Mr. Wriford there had been such playfulness of spirit as stirred within him now. Soft she was where she touched him, sensibly warm against his arm, enticingly fragrant.
"Told you this would be jolly, didn't I?" said Essie.
"Yes, it is," agreed Mr. Wriford, and put his arm along the seat behind her shoulders.
Essie didn't seem to mind.
And then his hand upon the shoulder further from him.
Nor to mind that.
"All right, I call it," said Essie. "You know, if you came out more to the band and places like this, you soon wouldn't be so quiet."
"I shouldn't care much about it by myself," said Mr. Wriford.
"Oh, I'd come with you," Essie assured him. "Nothing's much fun not when you do it by yourself. I say, whatever are you doing with that arm of yours on my shoulder?"
"I'm not doing anything with it," said Mr. Wriford, and gave a little laugh, and said: "I'm going to, though."
"What?"
"This."
"Oo-oo!" cried Essie.
Mr. Wriford's "This" was bending his face to hers, and his arm slipped a little lower down her shoulders, and drawing her towards him. "Oo-oo-oo!" cried Essie and pressed away and turned away her head. "Oo-oo!" and then he kissed her cheek, then brought his other arm around and turned her face to his. "Oo-oo-oo! I say, you know!"—and there, close beneath his own, were those soft, expressive lips of hers, and twice he kissed them: and of a sudden she was relaxed in his arms, no longer struggling, and there were depths in those eyes of hers, and this time a long kiss.
"There!" said Mr. Wriford and released her; and immediately two curious emotions followed in his mind. First, that, now the thing was over, it was over—completed, done, not attracting any more.
"I say, you know!" said Essie, settling her hat and pouting at him: and all rosy she was, all radiant, enticingly pouting, pretending aggrievement—just the very blushes, pouts, and smiles to have it done again. But for Mr. Wriford not enticing at all: over, done; conceiving in him almost a distaste of it; and, moved a trifle away from her, he said hardly: "I suppose the lodger always does that, too?"
"Well, most of 'em," said Essie cheerfully; and at that his new emotion quickened, and he made a petulant, angry movement with his shoulders.
She detected his meaning just as she had detected the coldness in his voice as they came down towards the Gardens together a short while before. She detected his meaning, and answered him sharply, and the words of her defence and the manner of it broke out in him the second of the two emotions that followed his caprice.
"Well, what's the odds to it if they have?" said Essie, sitting up very straight and speaking very tensely. "Where's the harm? It's only fun. Not as if I had a proper young fellow of my own. Take jolly good care if I had! Where's the harm? I like being kissed. I like to think some one's fond of me."
Now, for all the sharpness of her tone, she looked appealing: a trifle of a flutter in those expressive lips of hers: a hint of a catch in her voice. Swiftly to Mr. Wriford came his second emotion. Poor little Essie that liked to think some one was fond of her! Jolly little Essie with her "Let's have a laugh!" Here was the kindest, cheeriest little creature in the world! Let him enjoy it!
"That's all right, Essie," said Mr. Wriford and moved to her again and took her brown little hand.
"Glad you think so, I'm sure!" said Essie. "That's my hand, if you've no objection," and she withdrew it.
Mr. Wriford took it again and held it while it wriggled. "Come, who's the crosspatch now?"
"Well, that's nice!" cried Essie. "I'm sure I'm not."
"Put your fingers like you had them when we walked up. That's the way of it. This little one there and that little one there."
"Oh, go on!" said Essie, but settled her fingers as she was told.
"Rather nice just now, don't you think?" said Mr. Wriford.
"Not bad," said Essie.
"Perhaps we'll do it again?"
"Perhaps the moon'll drop plump out of the sky."
"Well, we'll watch it," said Mr. Wriford, "and if it doesn't we will. Let's be friends, Essie."
"Oh, we're friends, all right."
"Well, I'll pretend I'm your—young fellow. How about that?"
Essie gave a little laugh. "Likely!" she said. "You know, I believe you're a caution after all, for all you're so quiet. My young fellow! Why, I don't even know your name—your Christian name, I mean."
"What do you think?"
"However do I know? Shouldn't be a bit surprised if it was Solomon."
"Well, it isn't. What would you like it to be?"
Essie looked across the bandstand lights beneath them for a moment, then made a little snuggling movement with the hand in Mr. Wriford's, and then looked at him and said softly: "Well, I've never had an Arthur."
"Call me Arthur, then—so long as you don't make it Art or Artie."
"What, don't you like Art, then?" said Essie, and then suddenly, her eyes asparkle again, her lips twitching, "Aren't names funny, though? Let's have a laugh!"
And Mr. Wriford laughed and said the name Edith always made him think of seed cake; and Essie laughed immensely and said Alice always reminded her of a piece of silk; and Mr. Wriford said Ethel was a bit of brown velvet; and Essie said Robert was a bouncing foot-ball; and in this laughter and this childish folly Mr. Wriford found himself immoderately tickled and amused, and Essie quite forgot the disturbance that had followed the kissing; and home when the band stopped they went in quick exchange of lightsome subjects.
Mr. Wriford, for the first time that he might have remembered, went to bed and fell asleep without lying long awake to think and think.
The significant thing was that he did not try to remember it, nor reflect upon it. He was smiling at an absurdity of jolly little Essie's as he put out his light: he was soon asleep.
Walks with Essie are frequent now; and in the house talk with Essie at all odd moments that bring them together. Jolly little Essie! Mr. Wriford finds himself often thinking of her as that, and for that quality always seeking her when moodiness oppresses him. Days pass and there is a step in advance of this: good little Essie! Careless, he realises himself, of what mood he takes to her. He can be silent with her, depressed, oppressed, thinking, puzzling: Essie never minds. He can be irritable with her and speak sharply to her: Essie never minds. Essie is content just to rattle along and not be answered, or, if that seems to vex him further, then just to occupy herself with those bright, roving eyes of hers, and with those merry thoughts which they pick up and reflect again in the movements of those expressive lips. Days pass and his thoughts of her take yet a further step: pretty little Essie!—Essie who likes to be kissed, who sees "no odds to it," who likes to think somebody is fond of her! She is jolly little Essie—always cheers him: "Oh, Arthur!" when for an hour he has not spoken a word, or speaking, has snubbed her, "Oh, Arthur! Just look at those dogs chasing! Oh, did you ever! Aren't they funny, though! Let's have a laugh!" She is good little Essie—never minds: "Well, whatever's the odds to that?" when sometimes he apologises for having been ungracious. "I daresay I'm not half a nuisance, chattering, when you want to be quiet. Why, you're always quiet though, aren't you? I don't mind." She is pretty little Essie: "Oo-oo!" cries Essie. "I say, though!" and then, as on that first occasion, relaxes and gives him those pretty, expressive lips of hers, and is warm and soft and clinging in his arms; and then one day, when in his kiss she detects some ardour, born, while he kisses her, of a sudden gathering realisation of his frequent, his advancing thoughts of her, says to him softly, snuggling to him: "What, are you fond of me, Arthur?"
More swiftly than the space of the inspiration of a single breath an idea springs, fixes, spreads within him. It is determination of all his thought of her in their advancing stages: it is swiftest look from that vacant corner in the room of his life to Essie, always so jolly, always so good, ah, so pretty, yielding in his arms. Swift as a single breath it is. Why should not Essie fill that vacant place?
"What, are you fond of me, Arthur?"
Deep in his sudden thought he does not answer her. What sees she responsive to her question in his eyes? She sees that which makes her leave his grasp.
In her eyes he sees sudden moisture shining.
Deep in the sudden thought that has him—bemused as one that, in earnest conversation with a friend, turns bemusedly to address a remark to another, he says: "Hulloa, you're not crying, Essie?"
"Likely!" says Essie, blinking.
"You are, though. What's up?"
"That's the sun in my eyes."
"There's precious little sun."
Essie dabs her eyes with her handkerchief and gives a little sniff. "Well, there's precious little tears."
"Essie, you asked me if I was fond of you."
She turns upon him with sudden sharpness. "More fool me then."
"What do you mean? Essie, I am. I'm very, very fond of you."
"Come on," says Essie briskly. "We'll be late. I was only having a game—so are you."
Here is a new idea for Mr. Wriford—come to him suddenly, but, as now he sees, in process of coming these many days. Here is a new idea, completely developed in that swift moment while Essie asked him: "What, are you fond of me, Arthur?" but over whose development now constantly he ponders—welding it, shaping it, assuring himself of it in its every detail. It is solution—no less—of what has hounded him these many years. It is discovery of what shall fill that vacant place over which, in the quietude of these more recent days, dispassionately he has puzzled. Essie the solution: Essie the thing that shall fill up the vacancy. He wonders he has not thought of it before. Who, out of the turmoil, the hopelessness, the abject misery in which he came here, who found him the quietude? Essie. Who for the old grinding torments, the abysmal fears, has exchanged him the dispassionate wondering? Essie. Look, look upon the present state that now is his, contrast it with the old, and seek who is responsible. Essie. His early constraint in the Bickers' household is vanished as completely as his early miseries at the Tower House School. He is confident and at ease and actively interested when among his boys. Who showed him the way of it? Essie. In the life behind the plumber's shop he is become very intimately the "one of us like" that Mrs. Bickers, at their first meeting, had told him they liked their lodgers to be. By whose agency? Essie's. Essie has told Mother and Dad his name is Arthur and to call him Arthur: and Arthur he is become, alike to the cert. plumber, who delights to instruct him in the mysteries of plumbing and often from his workshop in the yard hails him "Arthur! Arthur, come an' look at this here! I'm fixin' a new weight to a ball-tap;" and to Mrs. Bickers who as often as not adds a "dear" to it and says: "Arthur, dear, give over talking to Essie a minute an' jus' see if you can't put that shop bell to rights like Mr. Bickers showed you how. It's out of order again." Who to this pleasant homeliness introduced him? Essie. Who supports him in its enjoyment? Essie. Who is the centre, the mainspring of this happy household? Essie. Essie, Essie, Essie, jolly and good and pretty little Essie! He meets her at every thought. She, she, supplies his moods at every turn!
Very well, then. The school term at Tower House is drawing to a close. Scarcely a fortnight remains before the holidays begin. What then?
Ah, then the new thought that suddenly has come to him. In the quietude of mind, in the dispassionate puzzlement upon what it is that he has missed in life—in this convalescent attitude towards life that now is his he has no desire to return, when the school term is ended and he is unemployed, to the wandering, to the hopeless quest that brought him here. Why not advance by Essie the quietude that by Essie he has found? Why not by Essie fill the dispassionate puzzlement that by Essie has become dispassionate where for so long it had so cruelly been frenzied? What if he went away with Essie? What if he took her away? What if he so far resumed touch with the prosperity that waited him in London as to get money from his agent, due to him for his successful novels, and go away with Essie—live somewhere in retreat with Essie, have Essie for his own? Why not? No reason why. It was fixed and determined in his mind in that very instant when, as she asked him "What, are you fond of me, Arthur?" it came to him.
The more he thinks upon it the more completely it attracts him....
He thinks upon it, and it attracts him, with no delusion of what, if he acts upon it, it will give him. It will not give him positive happiness. He would take Essie away with no such delusion as that. But strongly, seductively, it offers him a negative peace. With Essie no need longer to brood on what it was in life that he had missed: Essie who never minded, who always brightened him, who then would be his own—Essie would stifle that old hopeless yearning. There would be pleasure in money with Essie—pleasure in pleasing her, in watching her delight in little things that it could buy. He first would travel on the Continent with Essie, delighting in her delight at worlds of which she had scarcely so much as heard. How she would laugh at funny foreigners and at funny foreign ways! Then he would settle down, take a house somewhere, live quietly, take up his novel-writing again, have Essie always to turn to when he wanted her, to minister to him and entertain him, and have her—being Essie—at his command to keep out of his way when he wished to work, or perhaps to think—ah, for thoughts sometimes still would come!—and not be worried. Yes—jolly little Essie, good little Essie—there was refuge, refuge to be found with her! Yes—pretty little Essie—she was desirable, desirable, desirable to him! Yes, let it be done! Yes, let him immediately set about the accomplishment of it!
His purpose was no sooner definitely fixed, than in the way of its fulfilment practical difficulties began to arise. They arose in form of scruples. He intended no harm to Essie. She never should suffer in smallest degree, by word or act, in giving herself to him. But to marry her never—at the first making of his purpose—so much as crossed his mind. A little later this aspect of his moral intentions towards her came up in his thoughts—and marriage he at once dismissed as altogether subversive of that very peace of mind he anticipated in having her for his own. To marry her, as he saw it, were an irrevocable and dreadful step that immediately would return him to new torments, new despair. Bound for life to such as Essie was, not loving her, only very fond of her, very grateful to her—why, the bond would terrify him and goad him as much as ever he was terrified and goaded by the bonds and responsibilities of the London days from which in frenzy he had fled. Misery for him and, knowing himself, he knew that he would visit it in misery upon her. Panic at what he had done would fill him, consume him in all the dreadful forms in which he knew his panics, directly he had done it. He would hate her. Despite himself, despite his fondness for her, despite all she had given him and could give him, despite all these, if he were bound to her he would be unkind to her, cruel to her. Merely and without bond to have her for his own presented his Essie—his jolly little Essie, good little Essie, pretty little Essie—on a footing immeasurably different. That very fact of being responsible for her without being bound to her would alone—and without his happiness in her—assure her of his constant care, his unfailing protection always and always. Natured as he was—or as he had become in the days of his stress—he thought of bondage as utterly intolerable to him. No; marriage was worse than unthinkable, marriage was to lose—and worse than lose—the very happiness upon which now he was determined.