Читать книгу As Luck Would Have It - Edward Dyson - Страница 9

Table of Contents

THE meal was a pleasant one. Fod had outdone himself, and over the fish course, which was roast lobster. Bob rewarded his friend with glances of dumb gratitude. The diners grew quite merry, as the feast proceeded. Fod had given them oysters on the half shell as a hors d'oeuvre, and there was tomato soup from the tin, but improved beyond recognition by a few additions of Fryer's own. There was a roast duck, there was an excellent green salad with gruyere. But the cook provides a good dinner, the spirit that completes it the diners must contribute. Fod's meal moved to a crescendo of laughter and jest, with a suggestion of song provided by the Baron, who expressed exuberance in his own language.

Mary Longmore insisted on handling the coffee pot, and dealing out Mocha told a story that had a laugh in every line. The story was a great success: it broke down the last barrier, and Mary Longmore was admitted unreservedly to the brotherhood.

Fryer apologised for the garlic in his salad. "It sauces everything in our miniature Bohemia," he said. "It provides what an artist calls——"

"Atmosphere!" said Jan, and there was a general laugh.

"In confidence," said Mary, "I love it."

Jimmie Inglis put in a word for the favorite. "The world had grown flat and flavorless. It needed a savor, and a benignant Providence sent garlic." Jimmie went on to tell of his father, a mythical "Scotchbyterian" of strict religious principles and intemperate practices, whom he had adopted, purely for the convenience of the improvisator. This grotesque parent, it seems, had put three pounds of garlic, purchased for domestic purposes, in the tail of his long Sunday coat, and being comforted with nips and stayed with flagons was run down in attempting a crossing, and the disreputable vegetable was crushed to a pulp in his pocket by the wheels of a dray. Then followed a rich description of the good man's adventures and misfortunes as a pariah in trains, and trams, and public places, because of a pungent Italian odour he carried with him, soaked into his clothes.

Jimmie on occasions set aside his characteristic gravity to indulge in rabid reminiscences of this kind, rich with pawky humor, and the father, "fra Aberdeen awa," was a popular character amongst the habitues of the "Hut."

Cigarettes were mentioned. Mary confessed that she had long cherished the habit. Miriam would take just one, and Bob lit it for her, taking delight in the smallest service for the goddess. He had been at her elbow all through the meal, helping, prompting, keeping her well in the movement of things, and believed her to be happy, as she insisted she was.

Mary rolled up her sleeves, and announced her intention of attacking the washing-up. Fod would not hear of it, but Mary Longmore was a person not easily set aside. "It's my duty as a woman and a sister," she said.

They compromised: Fod would wash, she might dry. So a serviceable tea-towel was hunted up, and the others left Mary and Fryer to the most loathed task in a bachelor menage, and betook themselves to the "drawing room," where Miriam confessed she sang a little, and did so to the general satisfaction.

Jimmie's sister came in; a slim girl, with short-cropped red hair and Irish-blue eyes, staccato in manner and speech, suggesting a great nervousness in combat with a resolute spirit. She greeted Miss Longmore with a little fountain of talk, all about nothing much, but useful in providing a sort of mist of words in which the poor girl sheltered from confusion, much as the cuttle fish escapes unwelcome observation.

Jan played an out of the way Hungarian composition, "Is the Swineherd Now at Home?" Nancy Inglis having once expressed a great appreciation of it, and it being one of Jan Strikowski's serious aims in life to please Miss Inglis, an effort Nancy rewarded with chilling indifference.

"Eet iss de meeserable short legs I haff," Jan had explained ruefully. "Two long legs der girls want in a man, eaven eef he iss short a head. Look at Inglis, how dey love heem."

Fryer and Mrs. Longmore came in from their domestic duties. Fryer delighted.

"Its all arranged," he said; "Mrs. Longmore is to pose to me for Carmen."

The importance of the announcement was admitted by all. Jan applauded noisily. "Eef eet mean de lady come here often," said he, "we will excuse anything, eafen Fod's painting." Nobody minded what Jan might say; in matters of criticism he was a chartered libertine.

Fryer produced the wine. It was a tradition at the "Hut" that women will drink any sort of wine if it is only sweet enough. The libation was Tokay at a shilling a bottle. Mrs. Longmore expressed a preference for beer, and increased the respect in which she was held by the boys. Beer was forthcoming, and more cigarettes. The liquor was served in damaged cups. The Hut boasted only two tumblers. As an emergency egg cups did excellently for wine glasses. It was no longer felt that there was any need to apologise for harmless deficiencies of this sort.

Jimmie Inglis sang a chanty; Miriam, Nancy, and Bob joined in the refrain. At least it was a jubilant sort of noise, and everybody demanded more. When the singing ceased temporarily, Halliday, a stout, fair man of perhaps thirty, burst in upon them, with a Berserker demonstration of affection. He was bald, blue-eyed, fresh-colored, and pregnant with words, a tremendous teller of tales, coalescing the comedian's talent and the fluency of the practised writer. He was followed by Greenway and O'Malley, the first a slim, boyish figure, pale, with a clever face like a cutwater, and marvellous hands running so long, thin fingers tapering to such a point, you imagined he might have made a wonderful drawing with his finger tips, an artist with an almost etherial delicacy (wholly deceptive, for he was destined to live to be famous), fall-read, and brimming with ideas, he expressed himself in a splutter of eager speech, never quite completing a sentence. His companion, a man of 40, had a large head on an attenuated body, brown haired, red-bearded, a poet with verses to his credit known in every household, but without a second shirt to his back. He, too, had remarkable, thin, white, fragile hands, and fluttered them as he talked, with a peculiar butterfly effect.

Two shy girls came a few minutes later, and were introduced as Jess and Jollie. They might have been models for the head and sections, Fod deposited them against the wall, himself between them, making them his special care, all three on one box.

The sweet wine circulated. Fod had cigarettes for the girls—scented cigarettes. They lent the cloudy atmosphere a hint of incense. More beer was uncorked, and there was loud, gay talk, singing, laughter, music, and noise, noise, noise. Plenty of noise. Everybody felt things were going well while the noise was healthily maintained. If it subsided Jan Strikowski, now enthroned on a high-backed chair artfully contrived from a barrel, fell over backwards on to his head, or his neck, confident in the thickness of his skull, and so created a diversion, and hilarity welled up afresh.

O'Malley had seated himself by Mrs. Longmore on the seat vacated by Fryer, and when the fluctuations of merriment permitted entertained her with talk of the others present. His voice had a gentle charm, his comments were kindly if pungent. He said nice things about women. In the 58 years to which his life extended, nobody ever heard Vincent O'Malley say a coarse or evil thing. Mrs. Longmore was delighted with him. He picked at the atmosphere with his thin, prehensible fingers, and kept her in a simmer of merriment.

The centre of the room was cleared for the Baron's dance. Nancy went to the piano. The Baron's dance was a stock joke. Jan had invented it himself. Much of its humor was due to his short, whimsical legs, but it was danced with extraordinary vigor, and was grotesque and unashamed. The the speed of a flying shuttle, they assumed the most ridiculous poses, they did the most preposterous things. He rolled from the back of his head on to his heels with a perfect hoop-like movement, he revolved like a sleeping top, and head and hands were in the dance. His expressions were so frantically absurd you imagined his face had the quality of dough, and might be pulled into all conceivable and inconceivable shapes. He finished, exhausted, amid a yell of applause. It was a performance that might have won Jan Strikowski fame and affluence as a circus clown, he preferred to remain best local manipulator of the French horn, with leisure for the composition of symphonies.

Jimmie talked of his father from Aberdeen, Halliday told of an Italian city organist (barrel organ) who would suspend a performance to have heated and vigorous disputation with his monkey, the humor of which lay in the interpretation of a flaming red Paduan with a copious flow of whimsical broken English, and the spitting vehemence of the ape.

Fod who had withdrawn twenty minutes earlier with Jollie, reappeared with a piled dish of garlic sausage sandwiches.

Still more beer, and all took supper where they sat, with a running accompaniment of badinage and laughter. A hectic happiness possessed the party, and with it went a glow of affection, softening hearts strangely. Mary Longmore uttered a cry of alarm.

"A quarter past eleven! No trams till to-morrow morning, Miriam, my dear; we have to face the walk home."

"What of it?" demanded Bob. "It is a lovely night. As well walk home an hour later."

"I simply won't hear of another minute. It's been quite glorious; I never spent a more cheerful night, but we must be off."

"At any rate I shan't lose you yet a while. It is my privilege to see you safely disposed on your own mat."

There followed the usual hustle after hats and wraps and the clatter of reciprocal invitations. The boys and their friends must all give Mary Longmore an opportunity of seeing what she could do for the entertainment of artists. She fixed on a Sunday in the near future, and when they were well away she gave Lieutenant Holland further assurances of her gratitude for a really merry afternoon and evening.

"So different to the usual evening they bore you with in the suburbs," said Miriam.

"A stuffy sentimental song or two," continued her mother; "a mild game of cards and a supposed humorous recitation that always reminds me of the evolutions of a performing bear, and gives me pangs of conscience because I cannot help thinking of the preliminary agonies of the poor bear," Mary laughed aloud.

"I'm glad you liked the boys," said Bob gratefully.

"They're darlings," said Miriam.

"A honest lot of young blackguards—I love them," said Mary. "What a bright, gay nature that Mr. O'Malley has. He is a poet, you say."

"Yes," laughed Bob; "and working at it."

"Makes a living writing poetry; I shouldn't have thought it possible. Would he earn a great deal?"

"Not nearly as much as a third rate bookmaker, I'm afraid, but there is consolation in the fact that he does not particularly want to. A loaf of bread beneath the bough, a flask of wine, a book of verse, and his needs are satisfied."

"But you forgot a very important detail—'thou.'"

"The 'thou' in this case is a bedraggled wife with a sharp tongue."

"Oh, poor fellow, and he seems so gentle. He talks like an angel with a sense of humor."

Holland stopped short and faced her. "Did he?" he asked. "It's no business of mine, but did he?" He rubbed two fingers and a thumb in a gesture suggestive of the smooth flow of sovereigns.

Mrs. Longmore nodded. "A mere nothing," she said.

"The scamp! The scamp! I'll never forgive him. Our guest! He has no shame in matters of this sort, but I'll give once round the house for this." They resumed their walk.

"Now, Lieutenant, you will please do nothing of the sort. It was only three pounds, and I do not mind if it will help the poor fellow."

"It will help him to further flasks and another book of verse perhaps, but you will never get it back, not a penny piece of it. O'Malley regards whatever he may get in this way as only adequate recompense for the arts and graces he has displayed in gaining it."

"He certainly did it well."

Meanwhile in the "Hut" Fod was admonishing Jan Strikowski with some heat. "When that women offered to dry the dishes why the devil didn't you step up and insist on doing it? You knew damn well we had no such thing as a tea towel. It's your own gaudy fault if you haven't a fresh boiled evening rag for business on Monday night. I had to go and tear that towel out of the only clean shirt you had."

The Baron shrugged his shoulders, and sighed philosophically. "Eet no matter iss at all. I sew the front into the vest, and she iss all ride," he said.