Read Ebook: Men of Marlowe's by Dudeney Henry Mrs

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 845 lines and 47020 words, and 17 pages

Mrs. Neaves had made no attempt to dress for the occasion; she hadn't even taken off the sacking apron which was strained tightly across her big waist; her down-at-heel shoes went flip-flap as she crossed the room. Both Arnold and Clarissa could see, as the hem of the skirt kicked up, a circle of discolored skin where the stocking was torn. But Clarissa's face remained cold and unmoved, like the cameo, as usual. Her expression rarely altered. She was the most apathetic, the most impenetrable-looking girl in the world. Her cheeks had never flushed and her eye had never faltered when men in the bar made doubtful remarks; she never flushed nor faltered now, with her poor, degraded old mother's bare heel under her eyes.

"You needn't wait, Mrs. Neaves," said Arnold, as Clarissa, with a charming young-matron air, began to pour out tea.

Then he remembered that he hadn't paid her, and feeling very uncomfortable he put his hand in his pocket, brought out a loose heap of gold and silver, and dropped eight shillings in the moist palm. He hated to pay her before her daughter. But he hesitated at going outside the door with her and doing it there, for fear Clarissa should take fright and think he had found out. But Clarissa never lifted her white lids. She only said, with an airy laugh and the milk jug poised affectedly from her dainty wrist with the jangling bangle, "Milk?"

"Thank you, sir."

Mrs. Neaves bent her head to count the shillings and he saw again the line of pure, fair flesh below the collar of her bodice.

"Good-afternoon, sir. Good-afternoon, miss."

Of course Arnold knew that he must do something. He couldn't have his wife's mother working in the Inn. She must be provided for. He thought of many things; a cottage in the country, a little business--something genteel in the sweetstuff and tobacco way, an almshouse, a home for incurables.

"If I had a mother like that I'd choke her," he said violently.

Then, cooling down, he added, digging the ash out of his pipe with a scrooping scrape of the pocket knife:

"The thing would be a country cottage. When people get old, nature is soothing to them. She could keep a pig and a few hens."

"She wouldn't stay there a week. You are making a tremendous trouble out of a trifle. Ask her. Find out what she wants and give it her."

"That's not a bad idea. I never thought of it."

He went back to his set. Mrs. Neaves was making his bed. She was looking very heavy after her three-days' indulgence. Her black eye had reached the green-and-purple stage. It was a lovely color study. Arnold, who was a kind-hearted little chap, felt sorry for her. Perhaps it was grief that had made her get drunk. He sat down on the window ledge and stared at her thoughtfully as she doubled down to tuck in the blanket.

"What do you think of doing when you get old?" he asked carelessly. "Charring is hard work, I should say."

She stopped bed-making, put her hands on her hips,--it was her favorite conversational attitude,--and looked at him plaintively.

"The workus, I s'pose," she said tersely. "Now, if I could get that five 'underd pound the perlice is offerin', it's visitin' yer I'd be, an' not doin' yer dirty work."

"Five hundred pounds?"

"Oh, yes, I know. The Hackney Wick murderer. But you'll never get him. He committed suicide, there's very little doubt about that."

"Aint there, now? The mean 'ound! And five 'underd pound 'angin' on it--which would 'a' bin a godsend to many a poor person. To think of 'im a-skulkin' off in that 'ole-and-corner way, with five 'underd pound on 'im."

"What would you like to set you up in life, supposing you had the chance of choosing?" Arnold persisted.

She thought a little. Then she said longingly:

"There's a nice shirt-and-collar business goin' cheap in the Lane--Leather Lane. The laidy's got a young family and can't see to the laundry. Fifty pound 'ud buy it. An' I'm used to clear starchin'."

Arnold was delighted at being let off so lightly. He said, trying hard to smooth the complacent grin from his face, and lying glibly, as we all can in emergency:

"Yes, sir. And how's the young lady, sir? if I make so bold."

"The young lady is very well, thank you," he returned with hurried stiffness. "I should like to see you settled in a comfortable little business of your own before I leave the Inn. And if fifty pounds will buy the shirt-and-collar business, I shall be very pleased to make you a present of it."

When she had a little recovered from her astonishment, she gasped out:

"Thank you, sir, thank you kindly, I'm sure. I'll do the same for you some day; one good turn deserves another, don't it? An' I'll be proud to do your collars and cuffs for sixpence a dozen; the usual price bein' a shillin'."

That night Arnold went down to Clapham in the best of spirits. As he put it to himself triumphantly, he had saved a couple of hundred pounds and more, for he had quite reckoned on ten shillings a week at least, and these drunken old women live forever. Clarissa was on the platform. She ran up to him, through the hustle of weary-looking City men with tall hats and evening newspapers.

"Sol's gone!" she burst out hysterically. "I took him for a run on the Common. I let him off the lead when we got to the water--you always told me to. And I--I missed him. They run so fast, those deerhounds, don't they? There were a couple of roughs a little way back. I heard them say what a beauty he was."

You may imagine what a blow this was to Arnold; Sol was a great deal more to him than Clarissa was. Clarissa had never been a woman; she was a barmaid at first and a pretty face afterward. But Sol had been his companion for ten years. Sol had saved his life. All the salt was off his palate; his daily life was dull, without savor.

He left off going to Clapham; Clarissa must have had a dull time. Whenever she hinted at marriage, he put her off peevishly.

"She never cared for Sol," he said sadly. "She wanted to chain him up. Women haven't got brains enough to appreciate a good dog."

He was very miserable. He hadn't even got Mrs. Neaves to bully and to study. She was settled in the Lane and deep in the shirt-and-collar business. His new laundress helped herself to the whisky and took away his loaves of bread and his rolls of fresh butter.

Of course he kept in touch with Clarissa, wrote her polite letters, and went down to Clapham occasionally. One Sunday afternoon he was walking across the Common. He went to Clapham partly by omnibus and partly on his legs; he no longer flustered to catch a particular train.

Do you know these suburban commons? They are most melancholy. One feels really grateful to the jerry builder for creeping up so closely to them, as closely as he dares. No doubt they are lungs for the people--but that is not a particularly interesting point. The people! They play cricket on the Common, leaving it bare in patches, like a giant head beset by a parasite. They throw paper on it; screws of paper, fluttering ends of paper, strips of orange peel, empty bottles. The Common! It is sacred to the people. No builder will ever be allowed to devirginate it. Arnold was fond of talking like that. He used to swell out proudly when he said it, as if that stretch of sad brown grass and cracking earth belonged to him. The sanctity of the people! Preserve me from it! Give me the stately gardens of the Inn, with elms, rooks, the terrace, and memories.

Well, he was walking on the Common, sorrowfully and slowly, not caring a rush whether Clarissa was waiting for him or not. Suddenly he saw a long, grayish-blue something shoot straight toward him like an arrow. Have you seen these deerhounds run? Head down, paws out--it is a charming sight. Arnold very nearly infected me with his enthusiasm for Sol. Yes, it was Sol. He kept bounding shoulder high on his master, breaking over him like a wave. Sol! Arnold--soft-hearted little chap--never denied that a lump came into his throat and left him standing dizzy on the Common. But he was collected enough to grab Sol's collar--not at all a necessary precaution, as he ought to have known. The beast would have gone straight for the throat of anyone who tried to take him from the master that he had just found.

A rough-looking customer with a hoarse voice and a voluminous yellow neckerchief came up and began to be abusive, in the most picturesque language.

Have you guessed? Clarissa sold Sol. Sold him for five pounds, with which to bribe her mother. Mrs. Neaves, who was most accommodating, took it with the shirt-and-collar business. Clarissa's beauty brought the old woman luck.

"A good-looking gal she wur," said the thick-voiced man. "Brought him down to my place in the Borough and I give 'er five quid."

Arnold was fifty-five pounds and a wife to the bad. But he got his dog back.

Clarissa! She hadn't wasted her time. When Arnold threw her over she promptly married another fellow--a City man; in the wholesale fruit way, I fancy. He had lodged next door to the widow lady, and those back gardens offer opportunities.

Arnold went on a six-weeks' walking tour, for Sol's sake.

"They haven't been giving him half enough exercise," he said indignantly. "These pure-bred deerhounds get paralyzed in the hind legs if they don't get enough exercise."

WHY?

I SAID I would tell you the story of Adeline. You remember that she saw Orion fling himself out of the window.

Her story is in two parts. You will wonder how it is that I know both sides. It is because I met James Pray and got to know him very well soon after his wife died. He put Betty to boarding-school, let the cottage furnished, came back to London, and lived in the Inn until he married again.

His second wife is an artist too--a very sensible, capable woman--with mediocre pictures on the line and accounts of her artistic At Homes in the leading fashion papers. She keeps Pray well in hand. He is a successful portrait painter--of the third-rate sort. They live in Kensington. I go to see them sometimes.

When first he came to the Inn he used to talk to me incessantly of Adeline. Oddly enough, it was Murphy's old set he took. He talked to me about Adeline. I used to listen--with my tongue in my cheek. Sometimes it really seemed a little uncanny, and I had half a mind to tell him everything, and so quiet him. But Adeline, poor dead girl, was always begging me not to. He was forever asking--why, why? I could have told him. The very room could have told him. We sat and smoked and drank and talked--at least he talked--in that paneled room which some former fool had grained to imitate maple. The ghosts of Murphy and of Adeline--a guilty pair--seemed to glide between us and stand shadowy in the clouds of tobacco as poor Pray asked--why?

The very wood on the walls could have told him, the very oak, that black, discreet door which holds so much, was pregnant with an answer to that mournful query of his--why, why?

He talked of Adeline. He painted a nervous, evanescent creature, full of moods and always plaintively tender. It was not the Adeline I remembered. She had been fine, full, and strong, with steady gray eyes and skin of ivory, all health and life and fun and witchery and wicked daring. Though I never saw so very much of her. She was a lady, you understand; Murphy usually sported his oak when she came. He only asked me once to dinner, and I thought her most charming.

"PRAY.--Adeline, wife of James Pray."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet