Читать книгу As Luck Would Have It - Edward Dyson - Страница 8

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MRS. LONGMORE was coming to the evening meal on Sunday, and that involved a complete house cleaning, for the reason that the front room of the Hut was the only possible apartment for social entertaining, and the back room, the kitchen, was the one room in which a meal could be eaten. To reach the kitchen from the parlor you must pass through the spare room and the bedroom, the Hut having no passage.

"Let's serve it out under the trees," Bob had suggested. "And have great, juicy mulberries falling in the ladies' hair, and dropping plunk into the soup," replied Fryer. "No, there is no escape. A housewife's work is never done. We'll have to smoothe out and smarten up those beds, and make them look something less like an aboriginees' dump, and fake a dressing table with a couple of kerosene cases and that old window curtain."

"Suppose I drop in and see what I can borrow from the girls?" suggested Inglis.

It was a happy idea. Inglis had a sister living in free spinsterhood with a couple of girl chums, art students like herself, and a visit to their high Olympian apartments in the city produced three quilts, adequate disguise for the kerosene case dressing table, and a rug that covered the worst spots on the bedroom floor. Looking lovingly over their re-furnished dormitory, the boys were impressed by its civilised air.

"After all," said the Baron, "der iss somedink to be said for der luxurious life."

Little could be done with the spare room but square up the piles of books, music, art material, and various rubbish it contained, and sweep it out, and pass it off frankly for what it was, a mere repository of lumber. It had been a bedroom once, but a former resident with Fryer, the original lessee, a young artist with a craze for photography, using the space under one of the beds for a dark room, had carelessly left a candle burning there, and burnt the floor so thoroughly that a man trusting himself on it had a ten to one chance of going straight through. In fact two or three occupants suffered this experience before the room was abandoned.

But it was to the front room that the four devoted their best attention. This had to be squared up and dusted, and even scrubbed. The Baron, down on his knees in a hessian apron, industriously lathering the floor, stirred Bob to deep compunction. Jan had a good four inches of lather all over the place, and was so covered with suds himself that at a distance he might have passed for the little lamb that Mary had, which was as white as snow.

"Caesar's ghost! what are you going to do—shave it?" demanded Fod, looking in.

"If you tink eet would be better," Jan agreed, sitting up in the mimic snow storm he had created.

Jan Strikowski had crude ideas of domestic duties—he had started to scrub without divesting the room of its amazing accumulations, with the result that a dirty high-water-mark was visible upon everything, including books, piles of music, pictures, drawings, and the pale blue valence that served to hide the decrepitude of the old colonial sofa.

Here Fryer took a hand, and when Mrs. Longmore and Miss Miriam Longmore arrived the room into which they were shown had a specious air of primness and precision, provided you did not look behind the piano, where were thrown photographs invaluable to the artist, numerous sketches from the nude, a battered guitar, three discarded hats, and odds and ends; or under the "couch," where stacks of old illustrated papers were crammed with a worn-out suit of Dick's, and half a cwt. or so of modelling clay, two battered trunks, and a sketching outfit; or under Dick's table in the corner, where there was a litter of old and half-finished compositions, including that famous play, "The Money Power," manuscript music of Jan's, four very battered boxing gloves, and a swag of yellow-covered, cheap French novels in advanced decay.

Bob received his guests alone, and carefully disposed big Mrs. Longmore in the great arm chair, which had been repaired and stayed for the occasion, and Miss Miriam Longmore on the couch which he had cleverly re-upholstered during the morning with two pillows and part of an abandoned tablecloth.

"Well, here we are," Mrs. Longmore had said heartily. "This is my girl Miriam, Lieutenant Holland. She knows all about you."

Bob told Miss Longmore he was very delighted to meet her. Bob told Mrs. Longmore he could not believe it possible Miriam could be her daughter.

"I expected a girl of fifteen or so," said he, "and even then it would beat me. You are so much of a great big girl yourself. Surely you are having a lark? Miss Miriam is your sister."

"Get away with your Irish," replied the widow gaily. "Miriam's my girl, and might easily have been four years older."

Bob put up his palms in despair of the pranks nature played, and Miss Miriam, who was rolling her sunshade between beautifully gloved plump hands, said:

"Yes, people always look upon me as rather a bad joke played on poor mamma."

"Not a bad joke," replied Bob, hastily—"a delightful jest."

Miriam rewarded him with a smile that displayed two rows of wonderfully strong, even, white teeth. Partly because of those exquisite teeth, Miriam was prone to laughter, and nobody's little joke passed unheeded. She was a big woman like her mother, with the same plenteous, dark, red-brown hair; the same handsome, large mouth that set Bob speculating on the task of filling it with kisses: similar eyes, large, almost black, and curiously frank, investing every person they rested on with a special interest flattering and soothing.

Mrs. Longmore differed from her daughter in being twenty-two years older, but at 42 she looked a fair thirty. Bob had thought her magnificent, till he saw her daughter; now it seemed to him that Miriam Longmore was the sublimation of all womanhood. Mary, mother of Miriam, realised the effect, and perceived the transition of interest. It was a development she was not unaccustomed to, but a great sigh ruffled her ample breast.

It is a sad experience to have as a rival one's own daughter, possessing all one's characteristic attractions refreshed and rejuvenated, and Bob had made a decided sentimental appeal to the large woman's still juvenile susceptibility.

"Have you one here will interest her ladyship," said Mrs. Longmore, her hand upon Bob's knee, a sidelong smile towards Miriam. "She is a supercilious miss, I may tell you, hard to please in the matter of men. You should hear her on the desirable one."

Miriam raised her chin with drooped eyes and protruding underlip. "Don't talk nonsense, mother."

"She asks for a Prince Charming?" said Bob, ruefully.

"With a dash of the devil," Mrs. Longmore answered.

"Ah, then there is hope. At least we can provide the dash. Inglis has that, so has Fryer; but there is no elemental devil in old Jan, I'm afraid."

"And who is Jan? I haven't heard of Jan, have I?"

Bob provided a brief description of his friend Jan Strikowski, a cheerful rapscallion, kindly, courteous, unkempt, at thirty still a raffish youth in all matters but music, in that an artist serious and accomplished. "He can give you the best," said Bob, a hand on the piano; "but if it will help an evening go by is content to be the monkey on the organ." Inglis was the stable element in their small community. "He is running a wretched enough little paper now, but he will go a long way. He can do anything in journalism, and do it rather better than others. He is a grafter too, works hard for sheer lust of working." Bob read them scraps of Jimmie's verse. He showed them Fryer's drawings, and expatiated on their quality. "There's a little glow of genius in old Fod," he said. "Look at that girl. He etherialises, it isn't quite human, but it is beautiful."

Mrs. Longmore insisted that the little drawing was lovely—absolutely lovely. "I must get him to do something for me," she said. "Does he do portraits?"

And then Fryer entered the room with the Baron at his heels, and the two were introduced. Fod had made no effort to disguise his special peculiarities as cook, but Jan had donned his best suit, or at least two-thirds of the evening dress uniform in which he appeared professionally, but he had discarded the black coat in favor of a pyjama article with obtrusive stripes, from which the broad arrows were obtrusively absent, and a pair of rather old and brutally ill-treated carpet slippers was another distinctively Strikowski touch. Jan paid the ladies elaborate compliments in his quaint, distorted English, and retreated precipitately to the piano stool. In unusual company the Baron could only feel quite at his ease on the piano stool.

"We have been looking at your drawings and paintings, Mr. Fryer," said Mary Longmore. "I love them."

"Very, very clever," murmured Miriam.

'"I was wondering if you did portraits."

Fryer was already taking a screw at her with a painter's eye. "Carmen," he said.

"Oh, come, I say," protested Bob, precisely as if he had not suggested the same thing.

"Bizet Carmen," Fryer insisted. "The operatic Carmen."

"Why not?" demanded Mrs. Longmore. "Give me a mantilla and a red rose." She flung back her head, hands on hips in a familiar operatic pose, and broke into a great laugh. Mary Longmore's teeth were lit with gold, but her laugh had still much of the charm that made Miriam's so fascinating. Mrs. Longmore's laugh broke down all barriers. Everybody laughed.

"By Jove, if you only would!" said Fod. "An ideal Carmen."

Bob withdrew his opposition. "After all, it will do Fod a lot of good to paint a real, flesh-and-blood woman," he said.

Jimmie Inglis entered from a complete essay of mock serious quality on "Woman and Her Hat." Jimmie had a knack of timing his appearances. He loved to come in when other theories were staling a little, to figure as a stimulant, a welcome innovation. Jimmie was successful with the sex. He had certain rudimentary good looks, a touch of distinction aided materially by an accidental clump of white hair set in abundant, youthful, dark brown locks, over his left eye, and a quality of grave courtesy that impelled women to set him down at once as English, and early English at that. But Jimmie was born in one of our small mining towns 27 years ago, and was never nearer England than Warrnambool is. Mr. Inglis was delighted to meet the ladies. It was pure kindliness that had brought them to shed a little sweetness and light on their poor bachelor abode.

"We are lucky to be here," Mrs. Longmore declared. "Lucky to meet clever people. And, oh, I am just delighted with those strange verses of yours, Mr. Inglis."

Miriam quoted:

"'A dark eye stormed in a cloud of hair,

But a red lip smiled at me,

On a changing day is my lady fair,

With the sun and the rain on the sea.'"

"Bob, Bob, you shouldn't," said Jimmie in grave reproof. But Holland knew Jimmie Inglis, and only smiled. Fod withdrew to his culinary duties. Jimmie occupied himself with Miriam, and an animated dissertation on Henley's verse, for which latter the girl had expressed great admiration. Bob sat by the widow and talked of the plays they had seen. The Baron placed a soft, appropriate background for the conversation.