Atthe Obelisk streets radiate, and the trams going to London have to make their choice. The theatre in the road that leads to Blackfriars Bridge is a theatre of middle age, with its own opinion of the many juvenile competitors that have sprung up during recent years in near and in distant suburbs: it endeavours to preserve the semblance of youth and modernity by putting on four white globes of electric light, but its age is betrayed by a dozen women with aprons full of oranges, “Two a punny, a punny for two” (oranges are not eaten in the new theatres), and a tray on high trestles loaded with pigs’ trotters, which no one ever buys. Some steps go up to the shilling and the sixpenny seats; early doors, which exact from the over-anxious an additional threepence, are in a dark alley at the side, at the end of which is a door that leads to the box-office by day and the stage entrance by night. The outside of the house has coloured posters of grisly scenes that make the passer-by chill with fear: a yellow woman hurled down a blue precipice; the same lady bound by cords to a grandfather’s clock, which shows the hour as three minutes to twelve, and facing her two crape masked men with pistols; underneath the horrid words, “Atmidnight, my lady, you die.” A pleasanter note in the frames of photographs that hang slightly askew. Here, Mr. Lawrence Railton as a wicked Italian (at any rate, his moustache turns upwards, as Gratiano in a third-hand costume of the Louis the Fifteenth period, as Inspector Beagle in “Tracking the Criminal,” and in as many more characters as the frame will carry). In the centre, Mr. Lawrence Railton as the art of the photographer would have him be in real life, evening dress, insufficient chin, contemptuous smile—the portrait which occupied the position of honour on Rosalind’s mantelpiece.
A conspicuous evening for Erb, by reason of the circumstance that he had the honour of conveying Rosalind to the theatre; this because her father, having borrowed individual shillings on individual days from her on the promise of accompanying her had, at the last moment, come into a windfall of two and threepence, and had thereupon remembered an urgent appointment with a dramatist of note at a public-house just off the Strand. “Should the fates be kind,” said Rosalind’s father, “I shall endeavour to honour the performance with my presence later on.” Louisa, interested in everything that interested Erb, had organised a raffle at her factory for a circle ticket, and a chapel-going girl, who had picked the highest number out of a straw hat accompanied her, with the full anticipation—this being her first visit to the play—that she was about to witness scenes that might well imperil her futureexistence; unwilling, all the same, to give her prize away or to sell. Erb, confronted with the responsibility of transporting three ladies, had vague ideas of a four-wheeler, but remembered in time that this would excite criticism from members ever anxious to detect and crush any effort he might make to commit the unpardonable sin of “putting on side;” compensation came in being allowed to walk by the side of Rosalind, who, near Camberwell Gate, seemed to be dressed prettily but with restraint, but who, as they approached the Elephant and Castle, increased in smartness by contrast with the surroundings of Walworth Road. There were crossings to be managed, and Erb, in the most artful way, assisted her here by insinuating his arm underneath her cape, wondering at his own courage, and rather astonished to find that he was not reproved. Rosalind’s manner differed from that of other young women of the district in that she dispensed with the defiant attitude which they assumed, never to be varied from the first introduction to the last farewell.
“And now the question is,” said Louisa’s colleague, “ought I to go in or ought I to stay outside?”
“Considering you’ve got a ticket,” replied little Louisa satirically, “it seems a pity to go in. Why not stay outside and ’ave an orange instead?”
“Oh,” said the chapel-goer recklessly, “now I’m here I may jest as well go on with it. In fora penny in for a pound. If the worst comes to the worst, I can shut me eyes and— Who’s that lifting his cap to you?”
“’Ullo,” remarked Louisa, “you alive still?”
The lad threw away the end of his cigarette, and, advancing, remarked in a bass voice that he had thought it as well to come up on the off chance of meeting Louisa.
“My present young man,” said Louisa, introducing the lad.
“Well,” said the chapel young woman resignedly, “this is the beginning of it.”
Erb, again assisting, took Rosalind up the broad stone staircase; swing doors permitted them to go into the warm, talkative theatre. A few shouts of recognition were raised from various quarters as Erb went in, and he nodded his head in return, but he looked sternly at the direction whence a cry came of “Is that the missus, Erb?” and the chaffing question was not repeated. Down near the stage the orchestra made discordant sounds, the cornet blew a few notes of a frivolous air for practice. Erb bought a programme for Rosalind, and asked if anything else was required; but Rosalind, from a satin bag which hung from her wrist, produced a pair of early Victorian opera glasses, bearing an inscription addressed to her mother, “From a few Gallery Boys,” and said, “No, thank you,” with a smile that made his head spin round.
“But would you mind,” she flushed as she leaned forward to whisper this, “would you mindtelling Mr. Railton that I—I shouldverymuch like to see him after the show?”
At the stage door a postman had just called, and Erb, waiting for permission to go in whilst the door-keeper sorted the letters, could not help noticing that a violet envelope, in a feminine handwriting, was placed under the clip marked R; it was addressed to Lawrence Railton, Esquire. The doorkeeper gave permission with a jerk of the head, as though preferring not to compromise himself by speech, and Erb went up through the narrow corridor where the office and the dressing-rooms were situated. Cards were pinned on the door of the latter, and one of them bore, in eccentric type, the name of the gentleman for whom Rosalind had given him the message. A lady’s head came out cautiously from one of the other rooms and called in a shrill voice, “Mag-gie!” A middle-aged woman flew from somewhere in reply with a pair of shoes. Below, the orchestra started the overture of an elderly comic opera; a boy, in a cap, came along the corridor shouting, “Beginners, please!”
“She got in everything for the entire week,” said a triumphant voice inside the room, “settled for my washing, cashed up for every blessed thing, and I’ve never paid the old girl a sou from that day to this. Hullo! what’s blown this in?”
Two young men in the small room, and each making-up in front of a looking-glass; before them open tin cases, powder puffs, sticks of grease paint; bits of linen of many colours. On the wallsprevious occupiers had drawn rough caricatures: here and there someone had stuck an applauding newspaper notice, or a butterfly advertisement. Neither of the young men looked round as Erb came in, but each viewed his reflection in the looking-glass.
“Name of Railton?” said Erb, inquiringly.
“That’s me,” replied one of the two, still gazing into his looking-glass.
“My name’s Barnes. I’m secretary to the R.C.A.S.”
“Any connection with the press?” asked Mr. Railton, fixing a white whisker at the side of his floridly made-up face.
“Not at present!”
“Then what the devil do you mean,” demanded the other hotly, “by forcing your way into the room of two professional men? What—”
“Yes,” said the man at the other glass, taking up a hand-mirror to examine the back of his head, “what the deuce next, I wonder? For two pins I’d take him by the scruff of his neck and pitch him downstairs.” He glanced at Erb, and added rather hastily to Mr. Railton: “If I were you.”
“I shall most certainly complain to the management,” went on Mr. Railton. “It isn’t the first time.”
“I don’t know,” said his companion, “what they think the profession’s made of. Because we allow ourselves to be treated like a flock of sheep they seem to think they can do just what they damn well please.”
“I’ve a precious good mind,” said Mr. Railton, vehemently, “to hand in my notice. Would, too, if it wasn’t for the sake of the rest of the crowd.”
He ceased for a second, whilst he made lines down either side of his mouth, falling back from the mirror to consider the effect.
“Quite finished?” asked Erb, good humouredly. “If so, I should like to tell you, my fiery-tempered warriors, that I have only called with a message from Miss Danks—Miss Rosalind Danks.”
“That’s one of yours, Lorrie!”
“You mean,” said Mr. Railton casually, as he toned down a line with the powder-puff, “a dot and carry one girl?”
“Miss Danks,” said Erb, “is the leastest bit lame.” He repeated precisely the message which Rosalind had given him, and Mr. Railton clicked his tongue to intimate impatience. “I’ll call in again later on,” said Erb, “when you’ve finished your little bit, and then I can take you round to where she’s sitting.”
“Now, why in the world,” cried Mr. Railton, throwing a hairbrush on the floor violently, “why in the world can’t people mind their own business? There’s a class of persons going about on this earth, my dear Chippy—”
“I know what you are going to say,” remarked the other approvingly.
“And if I had my will I’d hang the whole shoot of them. I would, honestly.”
“I quite believe you would,” said Chippy.
“And I’d draw and quarter them afterwards.”
“And then burn ’em,” suggested Chippy.
“And then burn ’em.”
“Would you amiable gentlemen like to have the door closed?” asked Erb.
“Put yourself outside first,” recommended Mr. Railton.
The stage and its eccentricities attracted Erb as they attract everyone, and, a licensed person for the evening, he went about through the feverish atmosphere, meeting people who appeared ridiculous as they stood at the side of the stage waiting to go on, but who, as he knew, would look more life-like than life with the footlights intervening. Pimple-faced men, in tweed caps, hidden from the audience, held up unreliable trees; kept a hand on a ladder, which enabled the leading lady to go up and speak to her lover from the casemented upper window of a cottage; ran against each other at every fair opportunity, complaining in hoarse whispers of clumsiness. A boy came holding clusters of shining pewter cans by the handles, and peace was restored amongst the stage hands, but for the folk in evening dress, with unnatural eyes and amazing faces, who stood about ready to go on, there remained the strain of excitement; some of them soliloquised in a corner, whilst others talked in extravagant terms of dispraise concerning the new leading lady, hinting that no doubt she was a very good girl and kind to her mother, but that she could not act, my dear old boy, for nuts, or for toffee, or for apples, orother rewards of a moderate nature. These seemed to be only their private views, for they were discarded when the leading lady came down the ladder, and they then gathered round her and told her that she was playing for all she was worth, that she had managed to extract more from that one scene than her predecessor had obtained from the entire play, and hinting quite plainly that it was a dear and a precious privilege to be playing in the same company with her. Mr. Lawrence Railton brought for the leading lady a wooden chair; a middle-aged bird (who was her dresser) hopped forward bringing a woollen shawl, that had started by being white and still showed some traces of its original intention, to place around her shoulders.
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Railton, stretching his arms, when, having been ousted from attendance by others, he had strolled up towards Erb, “I don’t feel much like acting to-night!”
“Do you ever?” asked Erb.
“It’s wonderful,” went on the young man, “simply and absolutely wonderful the different moods that one goes through, and the effect they have on one’s performance. I go on giving much the same rendering of a part for several nights on end, and, suddenly, I seem to get a flash of inspiration.”
“Better language!” recommended Erb.
“A flash of inspiration,” said the white whiskered young man with perfect confidence, and keeping his eye on the stage. “It all comes in a momentas it were. And then, by Jove! one can fairly electrify an audience. One sees the house absolutely rise.”
“And go out?” asked Erb.
On the stage the leading man (who was an honest gentleman farmer, showing the gentleman by wearing patent boots, and the farmer by carrying a hunting crop), cried aloud demanding of misfortune whether she had finished her fell conspiracy against him, and this, it appeared, was the cue for Lawrence Railton in his white whiskers and frock-coated suit and a brown hand-bag to go on with the announcement that he had come to foreclose a mortgage, information which the house, knowing vaguely that it boded no good to the hero, received with groans and hisses. Erb, watching from the side, prepared for an exhibition of superior acting on the part of Mr. Railton, and was somewhat astonished to find that, instead of playing a part that forwarded the action of the piece, he was a mere butt sent on in order to be kicked off, treatment served out to him by an honest labourer, faithful to his master and with considerable humour in his disposition. Any expectations that Railton would take a more serious part in the melodrama were set aside, in a later scene of Act I., when the hero and the faithful young labourer had both enlisted in a crack cavalry regiment, he came on with his brown bag to find them and give information of importance, and was at once, to the great joy of the pit and gallery, again kicked off, whilst the regiment,consisting of eight men and a girl officer, marched round the stage several times to a military air, and, after the girl officer had delivered a few sentences of admirable patriotism, went off to the Royal Albert Docks to take ship for South Africa. Indeed, throughout the piece it was Mr. Railton’s privilege to follow the leading man and his low comedy friend, and whether he encountered them on the quay at Cape Town, out on the veldt near Modder River, or at the Rhodes Club at Kimberley, he was ever hailed by the entire theatre with joyous cries of “Kick him, kick him!” advice upon which the low comedy man always acted.
“D’you like your job?” asked Erb at the end of Act II., as he prepared to go round to the front and collect the men of his committee.
“Someone must hold the piece together,” said young Railton, wearily making a cigarette. “Take me away, and the entire show falls to pieces. Even you must have noticed that.”
“Upon my word,” said Erb, looking at him wonderingly, “you are a perfect marvel. I never saw anything like you.”
“Thanks, old chap,” replied the other gratefully, and shaking his hand. “Meet me after the show and we’ll have a drink together. I was afraid at first you were a bit of a bounder. Don’t mind me saying so now, do you?”
“Not at all,” replied Erb. “You gave me much the same impression.”
“That’s most extr’ordinary. There’s an idea fora curtain-raiser in that. Two men beginning by hating each other, and later on—”
“Any message for your young lady?”
“Which?” asked Mr. Railton.
“You know very well who I mean,” said Erb with some annoyance.
“Oh,” with sudden enlightenment, “you mean the Danks person. Oh, tell her I’m all right.”
Erb looked at him rather dangerously, but the young man, secure in the mailed armour of self-content, did not observe this. Erb, placing his doubled fists well down into the pockets of his coat, turned and went off.
“By the bye,” called Mr. Railton, in his affected voice.
Erb did not trust himself to answer, but went down the narrow stone passage, and drew a deep breath when he reached the doorway and the dimly lighted alley; he had work to do, and this, as always, enabled him to forget his personal grievances. In the saloon bar of a neighbouring public-house he found two members of his committee: because they wore their Sunday clothes they smoked cigars, extinguishing them carefully, and placing the ends in their waistcoat pockets; they came out on Erb’s orders to take up position at the stage door. The others were in front of the house, and Erb, going in and standing by the swing door of the circle, discovered them one by one and gave them signal to come out, which they did with great importance, stepping on toes of mere ordinary people in a lordly way.
“Did he send any message?” asked Rosalind anxiously.
“Sent his love.” Worth saying this to see the quick look of relief and happiness that danced across her face. “Said he was looking forward to seeing you.”
“Ah!”
Three minutes later, when the leading man had done something noble that in the proclaimed opinion of the heroine (there, oddly enough, as a nurse) foreshadowed the inevitable Victoria Cross, and Mr. Railton had come on in a kilt to be kicked off once more, and there remained only the affairs of England, home, and beauty to be arranged in the last act; the curtain went down, and two minutes later still, the orchestra having disappeared in search of refreshment and the audience occupied in cracking nuts and hailing acquaintances with great trouble at distant points, the curtain went up again on a flapping scene, behind which the tweed-capped men, it appeared, were setting an elaborate set for Act IV., doing it with some audible argument and no little open condemnation of each other’s want of dexterity. Chairs on the stage stood in a semicircle, and marching on from the left came the dozen members of the committee in their suits of black, twirling bowler hats, and glancing nervously across the footlights in response to the ejaculatory shouting of names. Spanswick, wearing a look of pained resignation, received a special shout, but the loudest cheers were reserved for the secretary, and thosein front who did not know him soon took up the cry.
“Erberberberb—”
It became certain at once that Payne was not to give an epoch-making speech. Confused perhaps by the footlights, uncertain of the attitude of this great crowded theatre, Payne’s memory ran its head against a brick wall and stayed there: he made three repetitions of one sentence, and then, having reversed the positions of the tumbler and the decanter, started afresh, the audience encouraging him by cries of “Fetch him out, Towser, fetch him out,” as though Mr. Payne were an unwilling dog, but the same brick wall stood in his way, and, concluding weakly with the remark, “Well, you all know what I mean,” he called upon Erb, and sat down glancing nervously across to the pit stalls, where was Mrs. Payne, her head shaking desolately, her lips moving with unspoken words of derision.
“I’m going to take five minutes,” said Erb, in his distinct and deliberate way. He took out his watch and laid it on the table. “Even if I’m in the middle of a sentence when that time is up, I promise I’ll go down like a shot. I suppose you know the story of the man who—”
Good temper smiled and laughed from the front row of the pit stalls and up to the very topmost row of the gallery at Erb’s anecdote, and, hoping for another story, they sat forward and listened. He knew that he held them now, knew they would cheer anything he liked to say, providing he said itwith enough of emphasis. He went on quickly that this advantage might not be lost, pounding the palm of one hand with the fist of the other, so that the dullest might know by this gesture when a point was intended; spoke of the good feeling that was aroused by the presence of a fellow-man’s misfortune; mentioned the work of his own society, urged that so long as this feeling of comradeship existed, so long would their condition improve, not perhaps by a leap or a bound, but by steady, cautious, and gradual progression. Up in the circle his young elocution teacher nodded approvingly, flushing with pride at her pupil’s careful enunciation, giving a start of pain at a superfluous aspirate that cleaved the air.
“He can talk,” admitted a man behind her.
“If I’d had the gift of the gab,” said the man’s neighbour, “I could have made a fortune.”
Erb stepped out near to the footlights and gave his peroration in an impassioned manner that had the useful note of sincerity. Those in the theatre, who were sympathisers, rose and cheered like a hurricane; the rest, not to be left out of a gratifying show of emotion, joined in, and Spanswick, the hero of the evening, as he rose from his chair to say a few words, might have been a leading politician, a general who had rescued his country from difficulties, or an exceptionally popular member of the Royal Family, instead of a railway carman of third-rate excellence with a notable wife.
Spanswick said this was the proudest momentof his life. Spanswick would never forget that night: useless for anybody to ask him to do so. If people should come to Spanswick and invite him to erase that evening from his recollection, he would answer definitely and decidedly, “Never!” So long as memory lasted and held its sway, so long would he guarantee to keep that evening in mind, and carry remembrance with him. Thus Spanswick, in a generous way that suggested he was doing a noble and spontaneous act, and one for which the audience should be everlastingly grateful. Payne, as Chairman, rose, and ignoring a suggestion from the gallery that he should dance a hornpipe, led the group off, the members looking shyly across at the audience, and the audience howling indignantly at one of the men who replaced his hat before getting off.
“Were you nervous, Erb?” asked Louisa excitedly. “Iwas. Nearly fainted, didn’t I?”
“Oh, don’t talk,” whispered her lady-companion, enchanted by the commencement of Act Four. “Don’t talk, please, when there’s such beautiful things going on.”
Mr. Railton had nothing to do in the last act, the dramatist having apparently felt that the thin vein of humour which had been struck in the character was by this time exhausted, and Rosalind looked with anxiety at the curtained doorway of the circle, but Mr. Railton did not appear during the last act, and he was not in the vestibule below when the audience poured out into Blackfriars Road.She was very silent on this, and when Erb saw her into a tram she shook hands without a word. Going back to assist Louisa’s young man in the task of escorting the two other ladies, he found himself intercepted by Mr. Lawrence Railton—Railton, in an astrachan bordered coat, and well wrapped around the throat, giving altogether the impression that here was some rare and valuable product of nature that had to be specially protected.
“I want you!” said the young man.
“You’ll have to want,” said Erb brusquely, and going on.
“But it concerns the girl you were speaking of.”
“Where can we go?” asked Erb, stopping.
“Come round to the bar at the back of the circle,” said Railton, “and you can give me a drink,” he added generously.
A few members of the company were near the bar, and Railton, to compensate for the presence of such an ordinary-looking companion, began to talk loudly and condescendingly. Never drank till after the show, he explained, some drank during the performance, but none of the best men did so. One could not give a good reading of the part unless one observed the principles of strict abstemiousness. He flattered himself that he was not one likely to make mistakes, and he held his future, as it were, well and securely in both hands. If Erb would promise not to let the matter go any further, he would show him, in the strictest confidence, aletter from a West End manager, that would prove how near one could be to conspicuous success.
“Not that one,” he said, opening a violet envelope. “That’s from a dear thing at Skipton. Worships the very ground I walk on.”
The letter in question fell on the floor. Erb picked it up and, in doing so, could not help noticing that it began: “Sir, unless you forward two and eight by return, the parcel of laundry will be sold without—”
“Here it is,” cried Railton. “‘Mr. So-and-so thanks Mr. Lawrence Railton for his note, and regrets that the arrangements for the forthcoming production are complete.’” “Regrets, you see, mark that! A post earlier, and evidently he would have—don’t drown it, my dear chap!”
“In regard,” said Erb, putting down the water-bottle, “to Miss Rosalind Danks.”
“I hadn’t finished what I was saying.”
“Didn’t mean you should. Let’s drop your personal grievances for a bit. Why didn’t you come round and see her before she left?”
“Now that,” said Railton, leaning an elbow on the counter, “goes straight to the very crux of the question. That’s just where I wanted to carry you. I hate a man who wastes time on preliminaries. My idea always is that if you’ve got a thing to say, say it!”
“Well then, say it!”
“My position,” said Railton, importantly, “is this. I have, as I think I said, the artistictemperament. I am all emotion, all sentiment, all heart! It may be a virtue, it may be a defect; I won’t go into that. The point is that little Rosie is the exact opposite. I confess that I thought at one time that we might be well suited to each other, but I see now that I made a mistake. Doesn’t often happen, but I did make a mistake there, and the unfortunate part of the business is that I—in a kind of way, don’t you know—promised to marry her.”
“So I understood. When does the affair come off?”
“My dear old chap,” said Railton, with effusive confidence, “the affair is off. But you know what women are, and I find it rather difficult—for, mind you, I am above all things a man of honour—I find it rather difficult to write to her and tell her so. Some men wouldn’t hesitate for a moment. Some men have no delicacy. But what I thought was this: Do you want to earn a couple of pounds?”
“Go on!” said Erb, quietly.
“Assuming that youdowant to earn a couple of pounds, this is where you come in. You, I gain, have a certain admiration for her. Now, if you can take her off my hands so that I can get out of the engagement with dignity, I am prepared to give you, in writing mind, a promise to pay—”
Mr. Railton went down swiftly on the floor. The other people hurried up.
“You dare strike me!” he cried complainingly, as he rose his handkerchief to his face. “Do it again, that’s all.”
He went down again with the same unexpectedness as before. Three men stood round Erb, who looked quietly at his own clenched fist; the knuckles had a slight abrasion.
“Want any more?” he asked.
Mr. Railton made one or two efforts from his crumpled position to speak; the three men suggested police, but he waved his hand negatively.
“Do you want any more, you scoundrel you?” repeated Erb.
“No,” answered Mr. Lawrence Railton, weakly, from the linoleum, “I don’t want any more. I always know my limit.”
Thisbeing a period of his life when Erb could do nothing wrong, the unpremeditated experiment with fists had a result that seldom attends efforts of the kind. Railton sent to Erb by post the following day an elaborate letter of apology, in which he argued that Erb, by a quite excusable error, had misunderstood what he (Railton) had intended to convey; that he honoured Mr. Barnes for the attitude he had taken up (which, under similar circumstances, would have been his own), that he should of course carry out his engagement with the young lady whose name it was unnecessary to mention, that he should ever retain an agreeable memory of Mr. Barnes (to whose efforts in the cause of labour he begged in passing to offer his best wishes), he trusted very sincerely that their friendship would not be impaired by the unfortunate incident of the preceding night. Thus Mr. Railton, with many an emphasising underline and note of exclamation, and a flourish under the signature, intended to convey the impression that here was a document of value to be preserved for all time. On Erb discovering his elocution teacher—whose lessons he now scarce required, but whose services as instructress in the art of public oratory he continued for the sheer pleasureof listening to her private speech—on Erb discovering her at his next visit with traces of recent tears he insisted on knowing the cause, and was told, first, that father had been borrowing seventeen shillings and sixpence, which she would have to pay back, amount required in order, the Professor had explained to the credulous lender, to enable him to purchase a comedy which had a part that would fit the Professor like a glove (“I can see myself in it,” the Professor declared); and on Erb dismissing this incident as too common for tears, Rosalind reluctantly showed him a letter from the admirable Railton, written by that young gentleman at the same time apparently as the communication he had sent to Erb: in this he regretted time had not permitted him to call at Camberwell Gate, the loss was his; but what he particularly wanted to say was that the farce of their engagement need no longer be allowed to run. On neither side, wrote Mr. Railton, had there been any real affection, and he was sure that this formal intimation would be as great a relief to Rosalind as to himself; he trusted she would find another goodfiancé, and he was, with all regards, her friend and well-wisher, Lawrence Railton. Erb, greatly concerned for Rosalind, told her nothing of the incident of the benefit performance, but tried to comfort her with the suggestion that Railton had probably written without thought.
“I am beginning to see,” said Rosalind presently, “I am beginning to see that I have at least one real friend in the world.”
“One’s ample,” replied Erb stolidly.
With the men of the society the occurrence gave to Erb distinct promotion. Something to have a quick mind with figures, something to be ready of speech, something to be always at hand wherever in London a railway carman was in trouble, but better than all these things was it to be able to think of their secretary as one able to put up his fists. Wherever he went, for a time, congratulations were shouted from the hood of parcels carts or the high seat of pair-horse goods vans; boys hanging by ropes at the tail boards giving a cheer as they went by. There is nothing quite so dear and precious as the world’s applause, and if here and there a man should announce his distaste for it, the world may be quite sure that this is said only to extort an additional and an undue share. At the next committee meeting Erb was requested, with a good deal of importance, by Payne, as chairman, to be good enough to leave the room for ten minutes: on his return it was announced to him that, moved by G. Spanswick, and seconded by H. R. Bates, a resolution had been carried, according to Herbert Barnes, secretary, an increase in salary of twenty pounds per annum. Erb announced this to his young white-faced sister, and added to the announcement an order directing her to leave her factory and look after the home in Page’s Walk; but Louisa would not hear of this, declaring that a humdrum life would never suit her, that she should mope herself into a state of lunacy if Erb insisted, and that themoney could be laid out much more usefully on, first, a pianoforte; second, a new suite of chairs for the sitting room in place of furniture which had been in the Barnes family for two generations; third, in articles of costume for Erb, and—if any sum remained—in something for herself. They argued the point with desperate good humour from either side of the table, until Erb found that she was really in earnest, and then he gave in.
“You always have your own way, Louisa.”
“Precious little use having anybody else’s,” she retorted sharply.
“You’ve got a knack of deciding questions,” complained her brother, good-temperedly, “that makes you a little debating society in yourself.”
“There’s something in connection with your society,” went on Louisa, encouraged, “that you might arrange if you’d got any gumption.”
“Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that I have.”
“It’s this. When one of your single chaps gets engaged let him begin paying into a wedding fund. You’ve got your strike funds and what not, but you ain’t got no wedding fund.”
“We haven’t any wedding fund,” corrected Erb.
“Oh, never mind about grammar,” said his young sister impetuously, “I’m talking sense. Let them all pay a bob or so a week, and the one that draws a good number gets his ten pound and goes off and gets married like a shot. See what an interest it’d make the girls take in your society. Seehow it’d make your young carmen sought after. See how fine it’d be for them to start life on their own, instead of having to go on paying so much a week for ’ire to the furniture shops. See how—”
“A reg’lar little orator,” said Erb approvingly. “It must run in the blood, I think. Besides, there’s an idea in what you say.”
“I never speak,” said his sister with confidence, “without I say something.” She paused for a moment. “I suppose, Erb, that—that with all this money coming in, you’ll begin to think about getting—”
He put his knife and fork down and rose from his chair.
The marriage club was only one of the new features that Erb introduced to the society, but it was the one which had a tinge of melancholy, in that it appeared to him that he was almost alone in not having in hand a successful affair of the heart. Lady Frances came frequently to Bermondsey, where she threw herself with great earnestness into the excellent work of providing amusing hours for children—children who had never been taught games, and knew no other sport than that of imperilling their little lives in the street. Erb, being seen with her one evening as she returned from a Board School, there ensued at the next committee meeting considerable badinage of a lumbering type; Payne declared that Erb should join the wedding club in order that the happy pair should be in a position to set up a house in Portman Square together;Spanswick remarked with less of good temper, that some people’s heads were getting too big for their hats; whilst other members, ever ready to take part in the fine old London sport of chipping, offered gibes. Erb retorted with his usual readiness, and laughed at the suggestion; but afterwards found himself fearing whether Lady Frances was, in point of fact, lavishing upon him a hopeless affection. He had almost persuaded himself to admit that this was the case, when his sister Alice made one of her condescending calls at Page’s Walk and gave, with other information, the fact that the sweetheart of Lady Frances, a lieutenant, the Honourable Somebody, had some time since been ordered away on a mission to the North-West Coast of Africa; her young ladyship was, by this desperate interest in the juveniles of Bermondsey, endeavouring to distract her mind from thoughts of her absent lover. Erb breathed again and gave assistance in managing the most trying boys at the “Happy Evenings.” One night, as he performed the duty of seeing Lady Frances through the dimly-lighted streets to Spa Road Station, they met Rosalind and her father. Rosalind flushed hotly, and Erb wondered why. He demanded of her the reason at the next elocution lesson, and Rosalind said calmly, that it was because at that moment she had given her second-best ankle a twist.
Lady Frances brought to Erb an invitation that flattered him. Her uncle, of Queen Anne’s Mansions, a man in most of the money-making schemesof London, but one never anxious to obtrude his own name or his own personality, felt desirous of starting a movement for (to give the full Christian names) “The Anglicising of Foreign Manufactures.”
This Lady Frances explained to him, with her usual vivacity, the while both kept an eye on some noisy Bermondsey infants, who were playing in the hall of the Board School.
“Other countries are getting ahead of us, my uncle says, and unless something is done at once, British trade (Now, children, do play without quarrelling, please, to oblige me!), British trade will go down, and down, and down, and there will be nothing left.”
“Are things really so bad?”
“Oh, they’re terrible,” declared Lady Frances, with great cheerfulness. “Apparently the bed-rock has almost been reached, and it is only by a great and a unanimous effort that Great Britain will ever again be enabled to get its head above water. So, at any rate, my uncle tells me.”
“I don’t know—(Young Tommy Gibbons, if I catch you at that again you know what will happen)—I don’t know that I’ve ever studied the subject in the large. My own society takes up nearly all my time, and other work I leave to other people.”
“Exactly, Mr. Barnes, exactly! I quite understand your position. But I have such faith in my uncle. Do you know that nearly everything he touches turns into money.”
“Very agreeable gift.”
“But the point is this, that nothing can be done unless capital and labour work in unison for a common end. One is affected quite as much as the other, and alone neither can do anything. British trades are being snapped up by America, by France, by Germany, even by Belgium, the only remedy, my uncle says, is for us to take some of their manufactures and plant them here.—(I was sure you’d fall down and hurt your knee, little boy. Come here and let me kiss the place and make it well)—I don’t know whether I make myself quite plain to you, Mr. Barnes?”
“In one sense you do,” said Erb. “Only thing I can’t see is, where your uncle imagines that I come in.”
A dispute between two children over a doll necessitated interference, based on the judgment of Solomon.
“Obviously,” replied the girl, delighted at the importance of her task, “obviously, your work will be to organise.”
“Organise what?”
“Meetings of working men to take up the idea, discussion in the halfpenny papers, argument in workshops. In this way,” she said, with her engaging frankness, “in this way, you see, you could strengthen my uncle’s hands.”
“Not sure that that is the one desire of my life.”
“I am so clumsy,” deplored Lady Frances.
“Not more than most people.”
“If you would only see my uncle and argue it out! He, I am sure, would succeed where I,” with a sigh, “where I so horribly fail.”
“Look here,” said Erb, hastily, “if it’s any satisfaction to you, I’ll say at once that I’m with the movement, heart, body, and soul.”
Lady Frances took his big hand and patted it thankfully.
“Can’t tell you how pleased I am,” she declared. “I’ll send on all the circulars and figures and things when I reach Eaton Square to-night—(Children, children, you are tiresome, really)—and then you can start work directly, can’t you?”
A busy man always has time to spare; it is only your lazy person who can never place a minute at anyone’s disposal. Thus it was that Erb tacked on to his other duties, the work of making known the Society for Anglicising Foreign Manufactures, pressing into the service all the young orators of his acquaintance, and furnishing them with short and easy arguments. Our import trade was so many millions in excess of our outgoing trade: why should this be so? Our villages were becoming deserted, and country manufactories dwindled day by day: this must be stopped. Vague talk about technical education; praise for the English working man, and adulation of his extraordinary, but sometimes dormant brain power; necessity of providing tasks for the rising generation that they might not push men of forty out of berths. An agreeable programme, one that could be promulgated withoutthose submissive inquiries addressed to the labour leaders in the House, which always had a suggestion of servility. Erb, the following Sunday, spoke at Southwark Park in the morning, at Peckham Rye in the afternoon, and Deptford Broadway in the evening, and, the subject being new, he found himself invited to address several working men’s clubs during the week. Paragraphs, slipped into the newspapers, sometimes contained his name: Lady Frances wrote that her uncle was delighted, and had asked to be especially remembered. A later note mentioned that it was intended to hold a mass meeting at St. James’s Hall, to bring the subject well before the people of London: her uncle would not be able to be present, but he had begged her to request Mr. Barnes to speak on this occasion: there would be a Duchess of philanthropic tendencies in the chair, and several members of Parliament had promised to speak. “Don’t disappoint us!” said the postscript appealingly. Erb sent an agreeable postcard in reply, and a friend of his, an assistant-librarian in the Free Library, promised to devote himself to work of research and ascertain how one addressed a lady of such distinguished rank as the wife of a Duke. The assistant-librarian urged that evening-dress was the correct thing, and offered to lend a suit which he and his brother wore when they went out into society, patronising dances at the Surrey Masonic Hall but here Erb’s commonsense interfered. The meeting was advertised in the daily papers and on hoardings, his name given as HerbertBarnes, Esquire, with full qualifications set out: he never saw one of the posters without stopping to enjoy the sight, and it pained him extremely to find that on one or two in the neighbourhood of home some friend had erased the affix. Louisa went boldly one evening to the offices of the new society, in College Street, Westminster, and obtained a copy of the poster; this she would have exhibited in the front window, but compromised by sticking it at its four corners on the wall of the sitting room.
St. James’s Hall was not over-crowded on the evening, and a wealthy member of the committee went about telling everybody that a smaller room would have been cheaper, but it was full enough to please Erb as he took a view of it from the stairs leading to the platform. The platform was fringed with palms; on the walls were hung banners, with quotations from Shakespeare down to the newest poet; quotations, that appeared to give vague support to the movement. Lady Frances, hovering about in the manner of an anxious butterfly, introduced Erb to the Duchess, and the Duchess, without using her lorgnon, said beamingly that she had read all of Mr. Barnes’s works, and felt quite too delighted to meet the author; Erb protested nervously that he had never written a book, but the Duchess waved this aside as ineffective badinage, and went on talking the while she looked away through her glasses at arriving people. So delighted, said the Duchess absently, to mingle with men of talent; it took one into another atmosphere. TheDuchess, for her part, claimed to have powers of observation, and trusted piously that she was not altogether without a sense of humour, but these exceptional qualities, she said, had never availed her when she took pen in hand. Erb, perceiving the futility of contradiction, suggested that she should one day, when a spare moment arrived, have another dash at it, and the Duchess, bringing her gaze by a process of exhaustion round to him, stared at him wonderingly for a moment, and then promised to act upon his advice. A shy little man of letters being submitted just then to her consideration, the Duchess dropped Erb, and engaged in animated monologue on the subject of labour and how to conciliate it: her own method seemed to be to treat it as an elephant and give it buns. Erb stood about the room, whilst well-dressed people flew one to the other with every sign of gratification; he felt all his usual difficulty of not knowing what to do with his hands. The people had a manner of speech that he could understand with difficulty, they talked of things that for him were a sealed book. Three clergymen who came in a bunch and seemed similarly out of the movement, gave him a feeling of companionship. When they all formed in a line and marched up on the platform to a mild, whispered cheering from the Hall, Erb’s interest quickened, and the slight feeling of nervousness came which always affected him when he was going to speak.
“And Idothink,” said the Duchess, with shrillendeavour to make her voice reach the back of the hall, “Idothink that the more we consider such matters the more likely we are to understand them and to realise what they mean, and to gain a better and a wider and a truer knowledge.” The three clergymen said, “Good, good,” in a burst of respectful approbation, as men suddenly illuminated by a new thought. “I am tempted to go further,” said the Duchess, waving her notes threateningly at the audience, “to go further, and express myself, if I may so say, that having put our hands to the plough—” She looked round at the straight line of folk behind her, and they endeavoured to convey by their looks that if a Duchess could not be allowed the use of daring metaphor, then it would have to be denied to everybody. “Having put our hands to the plough, we shall not turn back—(slight cheering)—we shall not falter—(renewed slight cheering)—we shall not loiter by the roadside, but we shall go steadily on, knowing well that—that—” Here the Duchess found her notes and read the last words of her peroration carefully, “knowing well that our goal is none other than the rising sun, which symbolises so happily the renaissance—” Here she looked down at the reporters’ table, and seemed about to spell the word, but refraining contented herself by saying it again with great distinctness. “The renaissance of British Trade and British Supremacy!”
A service member of Parliament proposed the first resolution, and did so in a speech that wouldhave suited any and every occasion on sea or land, in that it was made up entirely of platitudes, and included not one argument that could be seized by the most contentious; the whole brightened by what the member of Parliament himself described as a most amusing discussion which he had held with a man of the labouring classes not many years since (on which occasion the member had travelled second, this being notoriously the only way of discovering the true aspirations of the lower classes), and the member had subjected the man to a rigid cross-examination of the most preposterous and useless nature which he now repeated with many an “Ah, but I said—” and “Now listen to me, my good fellow—” and “Permit me to explain what I mean in simple words so that even you can understand,” the labouring man eventually giving in (so, at any rate, the Member declared), admitting that the gallant Member had won the game at every point—the probability being that the poor fellow, bullied and harried by a talkative bore, had done so in the interests of peace and with a desire to be let alone and allowed to read his evening paper. The service Member clearly prided himself not only on the acuteness which he had displayed in the argument, but also on the wonderful imitative faculty which enabled him to reproduce the dialect of his opponent, a dialect which seemed to have been somewhat mixed, for in one instance he spoke Lancashire with, “Aye, ah niver thowt o’ that,” and the next broad Somerset, “There be zummat in what yewzay, zir,” and anon in a strange blend of Irish and Scotch.
“‘That this meeting calls upon the working classes to put aside all differences and to contribute their indispensable assistance to the new movement, from which they themselves have so much to gain.’ Will Mr. Herbert Barnes please second?”
This was written on the slip of paper, and passed along to Erb at a moment when the grisly fear had begun to possess him that he might not be called upon at all. He nodded to the secretary, and felt that the audience, now tired of listening to spoken words, looked at him doubtfully. One of the three clergymen being selected to move the resolution, the other two looked at their shoes with a pained interest, and presently tugged at their black watch-guards, ascertained the time, and, just before the chosen man arose, slipped quietly out. Fortunately for Erb, the remaining clergyman started on a line of reasoning excellently calculated to annoy and to stimulate. Began by pointing out that everybody nowadays worked excepting the working man, doubted whether it was of much use offering to him help, but declaring himself, in doleful tones, an optimist, congratulated the new movement on its courage, its altruism, its high nobility of purpose, and managed, before sitting down, to intimate very defiantly that unless labour seized this unique opportunity, then labour must be left to shift for itself and could no longer expect any assistance from him.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” said Erb distinctly. The promise of listening to a voice that could be heard without difficulty aroused the Hall. “I should be glad if the gentleman who spoke last could spare just three minutes of his time, and refrain for that space from making a hurried and somewhat undignified departure from the Hall.” The clergyman who had adopted the crouching attitude of those who desire to escape furtively from close confinement, returned and sat, his back straightened. “He has spoke—I should say, he has spoken—in a patronising way of labour, and I want to tell him that we resent very strongly his condescending and almost contemptuous words.”
His predecessor rose and said, “May it please your—”
“No, no, no!” said Erb, with but a slight modification of his Southwark Park manner, “I didn’t interrupt the reverend gentleman, and I’m not going to allow him to interrupt me. Or to assume the duties, your Grace,” with a nod to the chair, “which you perform with such conspicuous charm and ability.”
The Duchess, who, fearing a row, had been anxiously consulting those around her in order to gain hints as to procedure, recovered confidence on receiving this compliment, and gave a smile of relief. Men at the table below adjusted their black leaves of carbonic paper and began to write.
“Now, I’ve been into the details almost as carefully as the reverend gentleman has, and what Iwant to say, in order that this audience should not consider that we are absolutely silly fools, is, that so far from this movement having been arranged in order to benefit the workers exclusively, it is very clear to me that there’s a few behind the scenes who are going to make a bit out of it.”
One cry of approval came from the distant gallery, but this scarcely counted, for it was a voice that had applauded contrary statements with the same decision. Erb knew the owner of the voice, a queer old crank, who went about to public meetings, his pockets bursting with newspapers, more than content if in the Free Library the next day he should find but one of his solitary cries of “Hear, hear,” reported in the daily press.
“I’ve no doubt they feel pretty certain of a safe eight or ten per cent.; if they didn’t, this meeting would never have been held, and we should have been denied the pleasure of listening to that lucid and illuminating speech with which your Grace has favoured us. I say this that the previous speaker may see and that you all may recognise the fact that if those I represent give the cause any assistance, we do so with our eyes wide open, and that we are not blindfolded by the cheap flannel sort of arguments to which we have just listened. But let me go on. Because this is going to be a soft thing for the capitalists, it by no means follows that it is going to be a hard thing for the worker. On the contrary! I can see—or I think I can see—thatthis is likely to benefit both of us. (Cheers.) And whilst I repudiate the attitude and the arguments of the last speaker, I promise you that I am prepared to do all that I can for the scheme—(cheers)—not in the interests of capital, for capital can look after itself, but in the interests of labour, which sometimes wants a lot of looking after. Your Grace, I beg to second the resolution.”
Not a great speech by any means, but one with the golden virtue of brevity, and one spoken with obvious earnestness. The Hall liked it; the subsequent speakers made genial references to it, and the Duchess, in acknowledging a vote of thanks, repaid Erb for his compliment to herself by prophesying that Mr. Barnes would prove a pillar of strength to the cause, declaring graciously that she should watch his career with interest, and gave him a fierce smile that seemed to hint that this in itself was sufficient to ensure success. (Later, when he said goodbye, the Duchess called him Mr. Blenkinsop, and begged him to convey her kindest regards to his dear wife.)
“I wonder,” said a gentleman with concave spectacles, “I wonder, now, whether you have a card about you?”
“Going to do a trick?” asked Erb.
“Here’s mine. Have you ever thought of entering the House?”
“Someone would have to provide me with a latch-key.”
“I take you!” remarked the spectacledgentleman adroitly. “Don’t happen to be Welsh, I suppose, by any chance? Ah! a pity!”
For a moment it occurred to Erb that this might be a sample of aristocratic chaff; he stopped his retort on seeing that the other was talking with perfect seriousness. “But something else may happen at any moment. We live in strange times.”
“We always do,” said Erb.
“I shall keep you in my mind.”
Lady Frances eluded some dowagers who were bearing down upon her, and came to him; she took an envelope from a pretty hiding place.
“My uncle particularly begged me to give you this. You were so good, Mr. Barnes. (Don’t open it until you get home.) Your speech was just what one wanted. You quite cleared the air.”
“Afraid I should clear the ’All.” Lady Frances seemed not to comprehend, and the knowledge came to Erb that he had missed an aspirate.
“My uncle will be so pleased. I shall be down at Bermondsey next week, and I can bring any message my uncle wishes to send. I don’t bother you, Mr. Barnes?”
“Need you ask?” replied Erb.
“You’re not going?” with her gloved hand held out.
Erb took the hint and made his exit with difficulty, because several ladies buzzed around him, humming pleasant words. The spectacled man walked with him along Piccadilly, talking busily, and expressed a desire to take Erb into the clubfor coffee. “Only that my place is so deucedly uncivil to visitors.” He contented himself with a threat that Erb should most certainly hear from him again.
“I shan’t lose your address,” said the spectacled person.
It was not until the Committee Meeting of the R.C.S. had nearly finished one evening that Erb, in searching for a letter which some members desired to see, found the note from Lady Frances’s uncle. He tore the flap casually, and, recognising it, placed the opened envelope aside, and pursued his searches for the required document. Spanswick, with a busy air of giving assistance, looked through the letters, and opened the communication which Lady Frances had brought.
“Pardon, old man,” whispered Spanswick confidentially. “Didn’t know I was interfering with money matters.”
Itis the ingenious habit of Kentish railways directly that hop-picking is over and pay-day is done, to advertise excursions to London at a fare so cheap that not to take advantage of it were to discourage Providence in its attempts to make the world pleasant. Country folk, who make but one visit a year to town, seize this September opportunity; some avail themselves not only of this but of the Cattle Show trip later on; a few also take the pantomime excursion in February, and these are counted in quiet villages as being, by frequent contact with town, blades of the finest temper, to whom (if they would but be candid) no mysteries of the great town are unknown. Erb’s Aunt Emma, giving herself reward for a month’s hard work in the hop-garden, came up every year by the September excursion. It happened on this occasion that the day could not have made a more awkward attempt to fit in with Erb’s convenience.
“Well,” said Aunt Emma, in the ’bus, desolately, “I’m not surprised! It’s what comes of looking forward to anything. When I heerd as you may say, you’d left the railway, I said to the party that comes in on Mondays to help me do my week’swashing, ‘I don’t know,’ I says, ‘what to think ’bout all this.’”
“Any other day, almost,” urged her nephew, “I could have arranged for the day off, but I’ve got important work to do that’ll take me up to nine o’clock.”
“Whenever I find a bit of a lad giving up a honest living, I always say to Mrs. Turley, I say, ‘Dang it all, this won’t do!’ And when it ’appened to my brother’s own boy I turned round at once, I did, and I said, ‘I don’t know what to—’”
“If Louisa had been quite herself, why, of course, she—”
“I’ll get back to Lonnon Bridge,” said Aunt Emma grimly. “Reckon I shall be some’ing like Mrs. Turley’s eldest. He come up one November, he did—first time he’d been to Lonnon—and it were a bit foggy, so he kep’ in the station all day; when he come home, he says, ‘Mother,’ he says, ‘it’s a fine big place, Lonnon is, but it dedn’t quite come up to my expectations.’” The parchment-faced old lady was pleased by Erb’s reception of this anecdote, and, gratified also to get a smile from other passengers, she relaxed in manner; Erb saw the opportunity.
“Tell you what we’ve arranged, Aunt Emma. Louisa and me talked it over as soon’s ever we made out your letter—”
“I don’t perfess,” remarked the old lady, “to be first-class in me spellin’. ’Sides, I got someone else to write it.”
“And we decided that we’d get a friend of mine—a friend of ours to look after you for the day.”
“What’s he like?” asked the old lady, with reluctant show of interest.
“It’s a she!”
“Your young woman?”
“I don’t go in for anything of that kind,” said Erb, looking round the ’bus apprehensively. “Too busy for such nonsense.”
“Never knew the man yet,” said Aunt Emma, “that couldn’t make time to get fond of somebody.”
Arrived at the office at Grange Road, Erb was showing the aunt some of his newspaper notices, when he heard on the stairs the swish of skirts. He lost the remaining half of his remark.
“And you’ve been fairly walking out, then, as you may say, with our Lady Frances?”
“You can’t call it that, Aunt. I’ve only just been paying her polite attention.”
“I know what you mean,” remarked the old lady acutely. “Her grandmother—I’m speaking now of forty year ago, mind you—her grandmother ran off with a—let me see! Forget me own name next.”
Erb answered the quiet tap at the open door.
“Good girl!” he cried cheerfully. “Welcome to our baronial hall! Aunt Emma, this is the young lady that’s going to pilot you round. Almost makes you seem,” he said to Rosalind, “like one of the family.”
“I only had to put off three pupils,” said Rosalind quickly. “How do you do?”
“I’m going downstairs to fetch coffee and scones for you two,” announced Erb. “Try not to come to blows whilst I’m away.”
“My sciatica is just beginning to wake up, as you may say,” replied Aunt Emma.
“So sorry,” said Rosalind sympathetically. “It must interfere with getting about.”
“Thank you,” replied Aunt Emma coldly. “I’m able to set up and take nourishment.”
“I expect your nephew has a lot of callers,” she said with determination. “He knows a good many people.”
“Are you acquainted with our Lady Frances,” asked the aunt in a mysterious whisper.
“I have just seen her,” flushing a little for some reason.
“These upper classes, they don’t stand at nothing, as you may say, when—” Erb returned, and the aunt, with the wink of a diplomatist, raised her voice. “They paid eight to the shillin’ this year it ought to’ve been seven. I said so straight, all through the hopping, I did, to Mrs. Turley.”
The doors were to open at two for the afternoon’s entertainment, and the aunt’s idea was that it were well to get there by noon, and thus ensure the best value in seats for a shilling; Rosalind gently over-ruled this, and they went first to Westminster Abbey, at which the aunt sneered, saying it wasnot her idea of a place of worship, and to the National Gallery, in regard to the contents of which the old lady hinted that they compared badly with a rare set of illuminated almanacks which she had at home, issued yearly by Deane, the grocer; the almanacks, it appeared, had the advantage of giving the date of jolly nigh every month you could think of. Trafalgar Square, looked on as a square, the aunt thought not much better than middling; the Embankment, in her opinion, lacked many of the attractions that she remembered once to have found at Ramsgate. But when, later, they were seated in the front row of the gallery in a small hall, and the curtain went up disclosing a crescent of black-faced men, with instrumentalists behind them, and similarly coloured gentlemen, with be-frilled shirtfronts, at either end asked riddles of the gentlemanly man at the centre, riddles of which the gentlemanly man almost alone in the Hall knew not the answer, able only to repeat the question in a sonorous manner, then Aunt Emma relinquished all attempt at criticism, and gave herself up to pure delight. “Can you tole me, Mithter Johnthon, how a woman differth from an umbrella?”
“Can I tell you,” repeated the gentlemanly man very distinctly, “how a woman differs from an umbrella?”
“Now ’ark for the answer!” whispered Aunt Emma, nudging her young companion gleefully.
“No, sir,” said the gentlemanly man, “I cannot tell you how a woman differs from an umbrella.”
“You can’t tole me how a woman differth from an umbrella? Why,” explained the corner-man, “you can shut an umbrella up!”
“How in the world they think of all these things!” said Aunt Emma exhaustedly. “Dang my old eyes if it ’ent a miracle!”
Aunt Emma wept when a thin-voiced youth sang, “Don’t neglect your mother ’cause her hair is getting grey,” became hysterical with amusement over, “I’m a gay old bachelor widow.” Rosalind found herself enjoying the enjoyment of the old lady, and when they came out into daylight, and went across the way to a noble establishment, where they had high tea, the two were on excellent terms with each other, and information regarding small scandals of Penshurst was placed freely at Rosalind’s disposal. The old lady spoke in an awed whisper when she came to the people at the Court, and arrested a slice of ham on her fork, as though sensible of the demands of etiquette when dealing with the upper classes.
“You’re not married, my dear,” said Aunt Emma, loosening the strings of her bonnet and allowing it to fall to the back of her head in an elegant way, “or else I could speak more free, as you may say, on the subject. That grandmother of hers—” The old lady pursed her lips, and glanced at her reflection in the mirrored walls with a pained shake of the head.
“But,” urged Rosalind, perturbed by the aunt’s confident manner of prophecy, “Lady Frances, Iunderstand, is engaged to a lieutenant out in North Africa.”
“Then sooner he comes back,” shaking a spoon threateningly, “sooner he comes back the better. I don’t want to go opening my old mouth too wide, or else like enough I shall go and put my foot in it. I’ve said all I want to say, and I don’t want folk to turn round arterwards and say to me, ‘Why didn’t you give us warnin’?’ Strikes me, my dear, we might have drop more hot water with this yere tea.”
“Do you know her uncle at all?”
“I knowofhim. I used to be upper housemaid at the Court.”
“And what—”
“I don’t think no worse of him,” said Aunt Emma in a slow, careful, and judicial manner, “I don’t think no worse of him than what he’s thought worse of.”
“I see,” said Rosalind doubtfully. The girl was silent for a few moments. She looked at the walnut face of Erb’s aunt, at the elderly dimple beside the mouth, she watched the old lady’s cautious way of munching food.
“What you thinking of, my dear?”
“Nothing, nothing,” said Rosalind, arousing herself.
“You won’t ’spect me to finish up these yere bits I hope,” said Aunt Emma, looking at the crusts by the side of her plate. “My teeth ain’t what they was when I was your age. Ah,” with a sigh, “that seems long time ago.”
“You have never been married, have you?”
“Could ha’ been,” said the old lady shortly. “’Twarnt for want of being asked.”
“Why, of course not.”
“Only chap I ever wanted,” she said reminiscently, “I let him go and get snapped up by someone else; silly bit of a gel that I was. I tell ye what ’tis!”
People at the neighbouring tables were listening, and Rosalind touched her wrinkled hand gently to call her attention to the fact.
“Once you’ve made up your mind, as you may say, about a young man, you’ve got to be jeggerin’ well careful you don’t go and lose him. Makes all the difference whether you get the right man or the wrong man, or no man at all. Now what about this Drury Lane? We’d bedder be too soon than too late.”
A wonderful old person for her age, and Rosalind, made rather thoughtful for some reason by the conversation, had much ado to keep up with her as they walked through Leicester Square and Long Acre in the direction of Autumn Melodrama. When the doors opened, Erb’s aunt fought her way in with the best of them, securing two seats in the second row, and keeping strong men and insurgent women at bay until Rosalind came up; she ordered a very tall man in the front row to sit down, and when he replied that he was a sitting down Aunt Emma suggested that he should lie down. Then the old lady loosened herelastic-sided boots slightly, and prepared to meet enjoyment.