Читать книгу As Luck Would Have It - Edward Dyson - Страница 7

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THE breakfast menu was porridge, toasted bacon, scones, and coffee, quite excellently handled. Holland came again for the porridge, he begged to be favored with a little more bacon.

"That's the curse of strong drink," commented the editor with ironical compassion, "it robs a man of appetite for wholesome fare."

"The man needs plenty of sustenance who is about to engage in continuous intellectual effort," mourned Bob. "I haven't the faintest idea what the devil I am going to do with that hero of mine. Where did I leave him, Fod?"

"Fighting like a tiger under five Boers."

"Only five? Thank God it wasn't eleven. I must get him out of his difficulties, and wind him up triumphantly, with a wife."

"I suppose he is a Scott," continued Inglis, "and you give him the Gaelic? Anything that makes a noise like a Scotchman will go with Malcolm Macalpin."

"There blows the spleen of the detested contemporary."

Jimmie Inglis bit deep into a buttered scone, and snorted his contempt. His paper, "The Native," was a threepenny society organ, devoted to frivolous comment on current affairs and conspicuous people; Macalpin's "Adviser" was a solid 6d. journal, with a reputation for sound judgment in matters of politics and finance, and affecting a serious and superior tone in literature.

Malcolm Macalpin of the "Adviser" claimed to have discovered that brilliant young literateur, Lieutenant Robert Holland, author of "Letters to Nobody," "The Test of Battle," "The House on the Veldt," "An Uncommon Soldier," "A Brother Boer," etc., etc. As a soldier in South Africa, Holland had suddenly developed an unaccountable itch for writing. Having no one to write to when all his comrades were writing, Bob conceived the idea of his series of letters addressed to no one, letters full of incident, facts of camp life, feelings in battle, vital touches breathing the hopes, the fears, the sufferings, joys, triumphs, and the anguish of a simple soldier, a dirty, hungry, ragged soldier wet from torrential rains, or burnt crisp by an African sun.

The stuff rang true, it was intimate, it dragged the reader in, made him party to the whole business, and through it all sped a weft of elfish humor, robbing of sordidness the fighting man's weary waitings in the muddy slums of war, beset by a hundred needs, beleagured by infinitesimal enemies that took him under his shirt. It left a sense of all the horrors and terrors, the trials and tribulations, as felt by a resolute and somewhat ribald spirit rising superior to everything.

Then as Bob looked at the stuff he received a call—it must be printed. He could never quite rest until it was printed. Holland had been a miner in Westralia when the summons to arms reached him, with as much idea of ever adventuring into authorship as he had of taking wings and singeing his pate at the noonday sun. He had an ordinary, Victorian State-school, sixth-class education, plus a passion for books. Inditing a brief letter to an old-time mate had been a source of extreme mental annoyance to him, yet after a few months' actual experience of war he felt the impulse of authorship, not merely stirring within him but raising an insistent hulabaloo, demanding the satisfaction of paternity. It was no new and peculiar thing, he had found a number of his comrades taking feverishly to the pen after big events, as though great emotion must find relief only in adequate expression.

The "Letters to Nobody" had been sent to the "Adviser" by post. He chose the "Adviser," because he had once or twice read out-of-the-ordinary articles and stories in its pages; Editor Macalpin published them, with an occasional benediction. They were liked, and when eventually Bob turned up in the "Adviser's" outer office, with the manuscript of his first story. "The Test of Battle," in his hand, Macalpin himself came forth with an affectionate greeting. The "Test of Battle" was satisfactory.

"We must have peectures for this, Holland," said the editor. "I'll gi' you worrd to Hilary Fryer. Stand over him man, see the young rascal doesna fob you off wi' mere slapdash. Choose your own subjects, and get three gude, honest illustrations, wi' the gust o' life in them. Fryer can do it if he will."

Holland found Hilary Fryer at the "Hut," Fryer received him in shirt, vest, and boots. Fryer, though no Scot, had a Caledonian detestation of trousers. His first act on returning to their bachelor habitation after a visit to the city was to tear off the detested garment, and emancipate his legs. He had read the "Letters to Nobody," and liked them. He took on the story with enthusiasm.

"It's all-right stuff," he said, after he and the author had chased through the slips together. "That incident of the old woman and the canary makes a fine picture." He had a square of Bristol board pegged to his drawing board, his pencil was already busy roughing out the idea.

And that was Lieutenant Robert Holland's introduction to the "Hut." The "Hut" was a little, old, four-roomed, weatherboard cottage, tremulous at the knees, shaky in the roof, literally held on its feet by the interlacing vines that smothered the place. It was set far back in a narrow strip of wild garden between the sheer brick walls of modern pretentious buildings, and had escaped condemnation at the hands of the authorities by a miracle. Vines roofed in the space between the back rooms and the neighboring house on the left, and through these vines in the season two giant mulberry trees dropped their fat, black fruit. The "Hut" stood in a somewhat pretentious suburb, just through the Fitzroy Gardens, and since coming into the hands of its present tenants had afforded more or less shelter to every vagrant young scamp in local journalism, every homeless poet, artist, musician, and actor. It was warmed with congenial feeling, and lit with the spirit of youth, and although the fare was sometimes meagre, and the furniture was a jumble of rubbish, lame chairs, and decrepit tables, with Jan Strikowski's bright new piano loaded with books, half-burnt candles, cigarette ash, hats, and, possibly, boots, standing out in aggressive dignity, there was a kind of happiness to be found there that existed nowhere else on earth.

On the occasion of Bob's second visit to the "Hut" he met Inglis and Jan, and helped to eat one of Fryer's amazing meals contrived most dexterously, and all of a sudden, it always seemed, out of the limitless disorder of that vagabond kitchen. Here and now he sampled Fod's speciality, the delicious roast lobster which alone might have served to invest the "Hut" with fragrant and grateful memories.

Holland already was envying the three their happy home life. Straight from the misfortunes of war and the vicissitudes of ill-ordered camps, there was nothing in the menage at the "Hut" he cared to object to, and much that made it highly desirable to a lonesome youth in a strange place. But it was Jimmy Inglis put the matter to him.

"I say, Holland," said the journalist, "what about your coming and pigging in with us here?"

Bob flashed, "To tell the truth," he confessed, "I've thought of it more than once, but hadn't the cheek."

"Don't be a damn fool," said Inglis curtly.

"Der wass Gus Glover,"' said the Baron helping Bob to beer, "but a too nice girl got a hold of heem, and convert heem to dark suits and pointed patend leather shoos der toes of which he sharpens effery mornink. Now he iss marriet, und we are lonesome."

"It we are to work together it will be ever so much more comfortable to live together," said Fryer. The meeting was unanimous.

Bob was touched. "It's blasted good and very friendly of you all," he said. "I've never had anything in the shape of a home since I was a nipper."

"Eet iss settle then," Jan offered a hand. "Enter into der home adobt der family."

Hands were shaken all round, a toast of fealty was drunk, and Bob became one of the society of the small commune, a commune of the kind that asks so little of its members and gives so much, a commune we are all glad to have belonged to, though none would be content to return to it perhaps.

Soon after breakfast on the morning following his meeting with Mrs. Longmore, Bob went sadly but resolutely to work, collected the opening slips of his new story out of the front room grate, and with a wet towel to cool his brow, and tie his mind down to the matter in hand, forged slowly ahead. He had a neat, natural gift for story telling, a true sense of character, and an impulse of honest workmanship he could not evade. The tale was told by noon. Fod fished his illustrations from under the ruined couch, furbished them up with a crust, and Bob dashed off to the "Adviser" office to collect.

In response to eager solicitations and specious arguments, with which he was not unfamiliar, Macalpin paid cash down, and Bob returned to the cottage, with Fryer's money and the amount of his own contribution to the weekly expenses.

"Which leaves me just two quid to entertain the bounteous widow," said he. "Can it be done?"'

"We entertained nine people here one night, including a fat grass widow," said Fryer reassuringly, "and it cost us every penny we had—seven and elevenpence."

So Bob went off in uniform, with only minor misgivings. He was back home before midnight, and finding all his friends in bed entered with the greatest care, undressed in perfect silence, and went to bed.

"'Sthat you, Bob?" from Jimmie's bed.

"Yes, it's me," Bob replied, not more grammatical than most of us out of business hours.

"What's the matter—are you sick?"

"No, no I didn't, want to disturb you."

"Whenle this sudden gust of virtue?"

Holland offered no reply. There was silence for ten minutes, and then Bob: "I say, Inglis."

"Huh?" out of the thickness of half-sleep.

"I say, Fod—Baron."

Two grunts and vague stirrings in the bunk opposite, "Well, well, what is it?" testily from the occupant.

A brief pause, and Bob spoke again, spoke in deep contrition. "It seems I asked her here."

"Her—who? What d'yeh mean?"

"Her—the widow, Mrs. Longmore. I asked her to pay us a visit at the 'Hut.' She is coming to-morrow."

"A woman coming here to-morrow! Suffering mothers!" The howl was from Fod.

"Yes. She's—she's bringing her beautiful daughter Miriam."

The other three were up in their beds, snorting as one indignant bachelor.

"What in thunder and hail do you think we are going to do with your widow and her beautiful daughter, Miriam in this den?" demanded Inglis.

"The fact is I asked her the night of the party, when I was two-thirds full. At any rate she says I did, and of course I couldn't contradict the woman to her teeth. I had been talking about you all, saying how bright and fine you were, and all that—writers, artists, musicians."

Further grunts of disgust out of the darkness, and the Baron: "Here iss a musician poorer than der orkan grinters—they can afford to keep monkeys."

"Of course she was deeply interested; and full of curiosity concerning these dear artists and writers."

"It's to be a course in natural history. Why the devil don't you take the woman to the Zoo?" inquired Inglis.

"Of course I'm awfully sorry, but if you knew her you wouldn't mind. A big, downright, frank sort of scoundrel—you'd be at home with her in ten seconds."

"And the beautiful daughter Miriam?" hinted Fod.

"I haven't seen her yet. She was away at some place they have in the country. The mother asked me if she might bring her. You'll just love her, Fryer. She's your ideal Carmen."

"What, the beautiful daughter Miriam?"

"No, the mother. They've got some sort of a place of business in the city—appear to be very comfortably off."

"And you propose to entertain the rich middle class here in this crib? Where will you sit your society friend, on the three-legged couch of wire mousetraps, or in the big armchair that lets its occupants through to the floor?"

"I suppose I have taken a liberty. I'll contrive to put her off somehow."

"Ah-h, shut up!" said Fryer. "Are we a push of greasy cheese-mongers that we cannot entertain a couple of ladies without plush suites and cut glass? We'll make your friends comfortable, Bob."

"Then for the love of Lucifer, what's all the cackle about?" demanded Jimmie.

"Der one ting I haff always say is wrong mit us iss der lack of congenial female siciedy," said the Baron.

"Thank you, boys, you're all so dam decent," said Bob.

Three young men snored vigorously.