XXVII
Mrs Dare, wise woman and excellent housekeeper, had for some time past been doing her best to cut down her proverbial coat to suit the exigencies of the shrunken war-time cloth at her disposal.
In other words, she had been curtailing the running expenses of The Red House so as to bear as lightly as possible on the attenuated income from St Mary Axe. Income, indeed, in actual fact, St Mary Axe had none. Mr Dare was, of necessity, living on such remnants of capital as he had been able to save from the stranded ship.
So Mrs Dare found another place for her housemaid, prevailed on her cook, who was a treasure and had been with her over five years, to remain as ‘general,’ with promise of loss of title and reinstatement of position as soon as times mended, and with Honor’s assistance and an occasional helping hand from Mrs Skirrow, managed to get along very well.
Mrs Skirrow had always been a source of amusement at The Red House. She had a point of view of her own and a sense of humour, and an almost unfailing cheerfulness amid circumstances which drove many of her neighbours to drink.
Mrs. Skirrow did not drink. She had too much hard-earned common-sense, and she could not afford it. With three men more or less on her hands, and mostly more, it took every half-crown she could earn at her charing to keep the home together.
But the war had marvellously altered all that. Not only had she no men to keep but the boot was on the other leg. Her men were actually helping to keep her. She woke up of a night now and then and lay blissfully wonderingif it was all a dream, or if she had died and gone to heaven. To be kept by her lazy ones! It seemed altogether too good to be true. And yet every Friday, when she drew her money, proved that true it was. No wonder she hoped with all her heart that it might go on for long enough,—so long, of course, as none of them went and got themselves killed. But men were as a rule so contrary that she lived in daily expectation of one or other doing that same.
For the first two months,—due possibly to some default on her part in filling up and sending in the necessary but bewildering papers,—or it might be to the general muddle at Head-Quarters—she received no money at all. So she kept steadily on with her own work, and having only herself to keep, got along very nicely, meanwhile never ceasing to push her claims with all her powers, and few were better equipped in that way. And Mrs Dare was kept fully informed of everything with racy comments on all and sundry.
Then at last, to Mrs. Skirrow’s great satisfaction, the matter was arranged, and by some extraordinary method of calculation, promoted without doubt by herself and argued with characteristic vehemence and possibly just a trifle of exaggeration here and there, her money began to come in.
She received nearly ten pounds of arrears in a lump sum, and was to get twenty-three shillings a week.
She had never had ten pounds all at once in her life before, nor an assured income of over a pound a week without needing to lift her hand. And, strange to say—yet not so very strange, seeing that she was Mrs Skirrow,—she did not lose her head and go on the ramp as some she knew had done.
In the first place she bought herself a new dress and coat and hat, such as she had vainly imagined herself in, any time this ten years, and fancied herself exceedingly in them.
The choosing and buying of that dress and coat andhat, the going from shop to shop and from window to window, comparing styles and prices, with the delicious knowledge that the money was in her pocket and she was in a position to pick and choose to her heart’s content, was in itself one of the greatest treats she had ever known, and she spread it over quite a considerable period.
And when she turned up one night in her new rig-out, to explain to Mrs Dare that she would not be able to come to her next week as she was going to the seaside, Mrs Dare did not at first recognise her.
When she did she complimented her on her taste and good sense in taking a holiday and hoped she would come back all the better for it.
“I will that. You bet your life, mum! Fust reel holiday I’ve had for twenty years an’ I’m going to enjoy it. Seaside and decently dressed—that’s my idee of a reel holiday. It’s not some folk’s though. There’s me neighbour, Mrs Clemmens, now. She had no money for a while, same as meself. Then she got twenty pound all in one lump. She’s got a heap o’ boys at the war. And what did she do with it? She gathered all her old cronies—an’ a fine hot lot some of ’em are, I can tell you, mum!—and she took ’em all up to London, and fed ’em, and drank ’em, and music-halled ’em, till they was all blind and th’ hull lot of ’em was run in at last, and in the mornin’ she hadn’t enough left to pay the fines. A fair scandal, I calls it!”
“Disgraceful!” assented Mrs Dare. “I’m rejoiced to know that your common-sense condemns that kind of thing, and I hope you’ll have a real good time and come back all the better for it.”
“I will, mum. You bet your boots on that!”
And she did. She journeyed down to Margate in a ‘Ladies Only’ third-class carriage, and bore herself with such dignity that her fellow-travellers were divided as to whether she kept a stylish public somewhere in the West End or a Superior Servants’ Registry Office. She picked out a cheap but adequate lodging, she revelled inall the joys of Margate, ate many winkles, and went to ‘the pictures’ at least once each day, and the whole grand excursion, fares included, totalled up to no more than thirty shillings,—“an’ the best investment ever I made in me life,” she told Mrs Dare over her scrubbing brush, the following week, “an’ I’m thinkin’ I’ll run down for th’ week end now and again, if so be’s this blessed war keeps on a bit.”
Mrs Dare found it really refreshing, amid the abounding troubles of the times, to come across someone who had not only no fault to find with them, but was actually, by reason of them, enjoying quite unexpected prosperity.
For her own heart had been heavy enough in those days, what with the Colonel’s illness and her husband’s very natural depression as to the future outlook.
He had come in one night, some time before, in a state of most justifiable exasperation. And yet the whole thing was so amazingly impudent that in telling his wife of it he could scarce forbear a grim smile. At the same time it was an eye-opener as to the truculent immorality of the firms he had been dealing with for years past in the most perfect good faith, and he vowed he would never forget it.
Two of his best customers, one at Hamburg and the other at Frankfort, owing him between them close on £5000 had coolly sent him word that, as no money could be sent out of the country, they had invested the amounts due to him in the German War Loan and would hold the scrip, and the interest as it accrued, in his name. Both principal and interest would be paid in due course, that is to say—when victory crowned the German arms.
It took Mrs Dare some time to realise that it was not merely a distorted German form of practical joke. But her husband assured her that it was not.
“I had heard of it being done,” he said bitterly. “But I never expected either Stein or Rheinberg would play so low a game on me. I’ve turned over hundreds ofthousands of pounds with both of them, and now—this! It’s damnable!”
“Perhaps the Government forced them to it.”
“It’s dirty low business anyway, and it won’t make for German credit when things settle down again.”
But presently there came to him a bit of good fortune which made him feel almost himself again.
Business men who travel daily to and from town by train fall almost inevitably into sets, who occupy always the same compartment and the same seats in it, and among whom exists a certain good-fellowship and friendliness.
In John Dare’s set was a certain John Christianssen, of Norwegian extraction, long established in London in the timber business, which his father had founded sixty years before.
Christianssen was British born, his father having been naturalised. He had two sons with him in the business, and both had got commissions through the Officers’ Training Corps, and were heart and soul in their work and eager for the front.
More than once he had lamented to Mr Dare his loss in them just at this juncture. Not that he grudged them to the service of his adopted country but that their going made him feel, as he said, as if he had lost his right hand and one of his feet.
Mr Dare sympathised with him but assured him it was better to have a healthy body even with only one hand and one foot than to have no body left. And Christianssen, knowing the nature of the business in St Mary Axe, understood, and thought the matter out.
And so it came to pass, one morning when they got out at Cannon Street, that he said to Mr Dare, “I will walk your way, if you don’t mind. I want to talk to you.”
And when they reached the office, where one small office-boy now represented the busy staff of old, he sat down in the second chair and lit a cigar, and said, “I know pretty well, from what I have heard and from what youhave told me, Dare, how you are situated here. I have a proposal. I can’t go on without help. I want to be across in Norway and I want to be here at the same time. Now that Jack and Eric are away my hands are tied. There is huge business to be done with all this hutting going on, and I’m going to miss my share unless I make proper provision. And that is you! What do you say?”
“It’s killing to be out of work, which I never have been before for over thirty years. My business is gone, as you know, and most of my capital. Some of it’s invested in the German WarLoan——”
“No!”
“Yes! The low-scaled rascals, instead of remitting what they owe me, write to say they have loaned my money to their infernal government and it will be repaid with interest when the war is over—meaning, of course, over in the way they would like it.”
“That is low business!”
“Business! I call it simple dirty robbery. But it’s not only the fact that they’ve done this, but—well, I just feel that I would be glad never to have any dealings with any German again as long as I live.”
“I do not wonder. But that is all the better for me. We have known one another now, what is it—ten, fifteen years? Come in with me. We can arrange satisfactory terms. You see, my lads may come back, or they may not. My wonder, when I read the papers, is that any man of them all ever comes out of it alive. But even if they are not killed I am doubting much if they will find office-stools agreeable sitting for the rest of their lives. If they do come back it will be the overseas part they will want. So there it is. What do you say?”
“I can’t tell you what I feel, Christianssen. The very thought of it makes a new man of me. But—I don’t know the first thing about timber.”
“If you will relieve me of the office work and financing, it will be good business all round. Details as to woods, etc., you can pick up by degrees. I have a good staff here, butthe best staff in the world is the better for being looked after. If I can be free to get across to Norway and feel quite safe in going, it will mean much to me and to the business. You will say yes?”
“I’ll say yes with more in my heart than I can put into words,” and they shook hands on it.
So John Dare took up a new lease of life and hope, and was himself again and twenty years younger than he had been any time this last three months.
And presently, for his still greater comfort and relief of mind, came Uncle Tony’s unexpected legacy to Mrs Dare. It was a veritable Godsend. For the heaviest part of his burden, during these late months of no income and vanishing capital, had been the fear of what might befall his home-folks when the worst came to the worst.
The thought of it had kept him awake of a night and plunged him into the depths. He had racked his tired brain to find some way out of his difficulties. But it was like trying to climb a huge black wall whose top shut out even the sight of heaven. For always the grim fact remained that his business was utterly gone and he saw no prospect of its revival.
By the grace of God and Uncle Tony and John Christianssen he was delivered from torment. The home-folk were safe whatever happened, and he took up his new duties with all the enthusiastic energy of a heart retrieved from despair.