Читать книгу The Masterfolk - Haldane MacFall - Страница 13

Table of Contents

Wherein Master Oliver entertains Guests

When Caroline Baddlesmere returned to the great bare room, and took off her outdoor wraps, Noll was seemingly drowsing, Netherby Gomme sitting on the bed by his side.

The boy had been lying very still for awhile when he touched Netherby’s sleeve, signing to him to put down the ear of confidence:

“Netherby,” he whispered, “when it’s within a quarter of midnight, old Modeyne will be fumbling at the door-latch down below.... I shan’t be able to help Betty to bring him up to-night—so you might slip down on tip-toe and just keep a flight of steps above her all the way. In case she needs help you can pretend you are just going home.”

He took hold of Gomme’s coat-lapel:

“Don’t let her know you are on the look-out unless old Modeyne is very far gone—he’s a goodish weight to push along.”

Netherby nodded.

A gleam shot into Noll’s eye; and he caught Gomme’s coat-lapel again:

“He comes up pretty quiet—he always takes his boots off for fear of waking the gossips!” A twinkle glittered in his eyes: “The bother is that once he begins undressing he takes off everything but his shirt, and insists on going to sleep on the hall mat. Betty has got to keep him moving—she knows exactly what to do.... Once he starts up the stairs he is all right—unless he hiccups, and insists on apologizing to the people whose doors he is passing.... You’ll know soon enough, he nearly kicks their doors down. He looks killingly funny with his braces hanging down behind and carrying his boots and things as he goes crawling up the stairs, cracking his toes, and complaining that it is not seemly that rending Hiccup should climb the Whirling Stairs of Ambition. He sometimes lies down at the head of a flight of steps and insists on going to sleep—he says that we are the slaves of convention, and an overplus of clips tends to an overtax of sleep.... You’ve got to see that he doesn’t stop at the landlady’s door, or he’ll kick it and chuckle in a loud whisper: Behold where whispering gossip lies! with the accent on the ‘lies.’ He’s a bit of a wag is old Modeyne; but he won’t do anything low—he’s always a gentleman—even in his night-shirt.” The lad’s face grew serious again. “Betty will be waiting up for him—and she has no fire—and—I shall not be able to help to-night.”

Netherby nodded.

There was a knock at the door; and the little lodging-house drudge crept in, shut it after her, and set her back against it:

“Please, lidy,” she said with a loud sniff, “that lidy what walks like a police-officer is a-straddlin’ on the mat outside.”

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder towards the door behind her:

“I’ve forgot her name,” she went on. “I’ve showed her up, because it’s such a leg-aching grind a-goin’ down and up them stairs twice—but I’ll show her down again if yer don’t want to be bothered with her—and Master Oliver all of a heap too!... I did give her a hint as it was the small-pox likely enough—and I can easy work up the idea——”

The gift was pushed forward by the door opening behind her, and Emma Hartroff entered the room, her hands thrust in the side-pockets of her long jacket.

She greeted Caroline breezily:

“Hullo, Mrs. Baddlesmere—how are you all?... I could hear every word the little slavey said.... I thought I might come and worry Noll a bit—may I?”

Caroline had risen, and came forward to greet her.

“Yes, Miss Hartroff—of course you may.”

“I’m so glad—I was so afraid they’d send me away.”

Caroline, as she shook hands, whispered to her:

“If he show signs of drowsiness, please let him go to sleep.”

Emma Hartroff bowed an answer, and strode over to Noll’s bed; she nodded to the others, who made way for her, and taking her straddling stand near him, she surveyed the boy:

“You do look pretty sick, on my word, Noll,” said she; and added pathetically: “I wish I could do something for you—I never know what to do with kids; but——”

“I say, Emma,” said Noll—“you ain’t going to a children’s party, are you?”

Emma Hartroff raised eyebrows of inquiry:

“N-no, Noll!”

He signed to her to sit down beside him.

“Then don’t play the snivelling mother,” said he—“it ain’t your size. Come and flirt with me—you may hold my hand.”

Emma Hartroff laughed good-naturedly, and sitting down on the bed beside the boy, she took his hand:

“Noll, you are very old,” she said—and she blew a breath: “Phooh! you are high up.”

“Yes,” he nodded—“it makes me quite giddy when I smoke a pipe.”

A knock at the door—and the little drudge skipped in and shut it again. She strode down the room on tip-toe to Caroline:

“Please, lidy—here’s that rummy gent as speaks like them beautiful play-actors. He’s waitin’ to see you very partic’lar.” She giggled. “He’s such a funny gentleman! Excuse my laughin’, mum, but he is that hodd and ridic’lous! When I opened the door he says, says he: ‘Hail, lugubrious smudgy serving-wench!’ says he.” She uttered a sniff, and cocked her head thoughtfully: “I expect he’s a poet or that sort of party. Jimmy, what a rum tailor he has! But if you ask me, mum, he knows how to spell hungry. I knows a man’s eyes when he’s short of his victuals. I ought ter.” Sniff. “I do love the the-ayter. They talks so beautiful—just as if words had meanin’ in them. Not a bit like real people——”

“May I ask what the gentleman is doing, meanwhile?” asked Caroline drily.

The girl leaned forward, and added confidentially behind the back of her hand:

“He’s on the mat.”

She jerked her thumb at the door.

Caroline shifted uneasily in her chair:

“I wish you would call gentlemen by their names, Victoria May Alice,” she said irritably. “Do you mean Mr. Eustace Lovegood?”

“That’s ’im,” said Victoria May Alice.

“Then show him in, you stupid child.”

The face of Victoria May Alice cleared. She strode theatrically to the door, flung it open like a footman, and, suppressing a spluttered guffaw, announced mock-heroically:

“Mr. Eustace Lovegood!”

Lovegood walked in tragically—halted before Victoria May Alice, and put his hand on her head:

“Victoria May Alice,” said he, “you will never do for the Embassy. You do not take the world seriously. When you announce genius you must shout it fearlessly, as though you had thrust a benefit upon the world—not as though you were hurriedly hiding away undarned stockings in a coffee canister.”

Victoria May Alice muffled a snigger in her hands and skipped from the room.

Lovegood turned to his hostess:

“Ah, Caroline!” He advanced down the room slowly: “Your devoted slave—Noll’s devoted slave! Ha! Mr. Gomme, your servant! Miss Julia! I am your footstool.”

Caroline rose to meet him. She smiled:

“You wished to see me, Eustace!” she asked.

He nodded:

“I came to see if Noll were well,” he said.

She made as though she would lead him to the boy’s bedside:

“It will do Noll good just to see you,” she said.

The big man held her hand:

“Ah, my dear Caroline—I come for my own pleasure, not for his. Noll being ill, the town seems unholy quiet. History is an empty tragedy without its historian—an epic less than doggerel without its poet. And the town, being bereft of Noll, has ceased to be moved with incident. The world is become a dead-house. What an eye a boy has for calamities! He scents an event in the air. He arrives before the accident. A boy is always thrilled at the sight of a powder-cask——”

“I wish, Eustace, you were not always throwing lighted matches so near the cask.”

The great fellow laughed jovially, and kissing her hand, he strode over to the bed where Noll lay, his eyes upon him. The greetings were very cordial. There had always been the alliance of understanding between them.

“Noll,” said Lovegood, sitting down on the bed at his feet—“dear boy, I am not well versed in the teething of infants, the lacy mysteries of long-clothes, the cooing garrulities of the cradle, but—I was once a boy.... I remember the emotional moments of boyhood.... I have never forgotten my first pork-pie.... I would fain have brought you a rare roast goose, Oliver; but I had to decide on the homely chicken broth.”

He turned and called:

“What ho, without!”

“A-coming!” cried, from without, the shrill voice of Victoria May Alice.

The door was flung open, and there entered Victoria, carrying a smoking bowl.

“Victoria May Alice,” said Lovegood—“bear the goblet to the king.”

Victoria May Alice bore the goblet.

She handed the bowl to Noll—spluttered into a guffaw behind a grimy hand—and hurried from the room.

The big man, sitting at the foot of the bed, smiled.

“God bless you, Oliver,” said he—“and get well.”

Noll began to sup the fragrant broth with a spoon.

Lovegood got up from the bed—coughed—blew his nose.

Caroline caught his eye, and signed to him. He strode down the room to her.

“Eustace,” she said, “I wish you would not spend your money on the boy. You have no right to stint yourself—but—my dear fellow, you touch my heart—and—I cannot scold you.”

He stroked her shoulder:

“Tut, tut! nonsense!” said he, “we must not grow sentimental before we are forty——” He was interrupted by the click of the door, and, looking round, found Victoria May Alice at his elbow. She said to Caroline:

“My heye, mum, we is a-makin’ of a night of it!”

Lovegood laughed and strode back to his seat on Noll’s bed.

Caroline turned impatiently to the girl:

“Yes, yes, Victoria—what is it?”

Victoria May Alice sniffed:

“It ain’t it, mum—it’s them,” she said—“two of them comic gentlemen,” she tittered, and pulled herself up behind a grimy hand—“as is always a-hangin’ about with the party from the the-ayter.” She jerked a thumb at Lovegood. “They’re on the ’all doorstep and says is Master Noll at ’ome to partic’lar friends—and I says I’ll go and see; but if they was a-comin’ into this blessed house they’ve got to put out them dirty pipes. It’s not nice of them a-callin’ on the gentry a-smokin’ that muck. I don’t like it. These here London people has no manners. They wouldn’t do it if they was callin’ on a duchess or a bandy-legged bishop, or people as keep a butler. But—they are so ridic’lous! Specially that—te-hee!—fluffy gentleman. Blime me—if I don’t go on to the the-ayter myself when I’m grown up. I calls that Life——”

She stopped at the clatter of feet on the attic stairs:

“O lor!” she said resignedly—“here they comes, bless ’em!”

Caroline put out her hand and touched the girl’s arm:

“Victoria, my dear child, don’t be so noisy, please.”

“Beg pardon, lidy,” the child replied humbly, and with sepulchral hoarseness.

There was a loud knock, and before there was time to answer it, Rippley and Robbins boisterously entered the room.

Noll’s greetings were too boyish for whispered talk as they all found seats.

Victoria May Alice winked at Fluffy Reubens.

“He ain’t dead yet!” said she.

Caroline had scarcely returned to her work, when Victoria May Alice stepped stealthily to her side:

“Mr. Fosse called just before these gentlemen, mum,” said she. “The silly hass wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I says, ‘Well, it’s scarlet fever if you will have it between yer bleery bicycle lamps,’ says I.” She put her lean little arms akimbo: “He’s so blimey pushing.” She put her hand up to her mouth and added confidentially: “I can’t abide Fosse myself——”

A distant yell from below called: “Victoria-May-Yallis!”

“Hullo!” said the girl, “there’s ’er voice a-yellin’ again.”

She stole away softly.