Читать книгу The Landleaguers - Trollope Anthony - Страница 8

When Mr. O'Mahony and his daughter stepped out of the train on the platform at Euston Square, they were at once encountered by Mr. Mahomet M. Moss. "Oh, dear!" ejaculated Miss O'Mahony, turning back upon her father. "Cannot you get rid of him?" Mr. O'Mahony, without a word of reply to his daughter, at once greeted Mr. Moss most affectionately. "Yes, my bird is here – as you see. You have taken a great deal of trouble in coming to meet us." Mr. Moss begged that the trouble might be taken as being the greatest pleasure he had ever had in his life. "Nothing could be too much to do for Miss O'Mahony." He had had, he said, the wires at work, and had been taught to expect them by this train. Would Miss O'Mahony condescend to take a seat in the carriage which was waiting for her? She had not spoken a word, but had laid fast hold of her father's arm. "I had better look after the luggage," said the father, shaking the daughter off. "Perhaps Mr. Moss will go with you," said she; – and at the moment she looked anything but pleasant. Mr. Moss expressed his sense of the high honour which was done him by her command, but suggested that she should seat herself in the carriage. "I will stand here under this pillar," she said. And as she took her stand it would have required a man with more effrontery than Mr. Moss possessed, to attempt to move her. We have seen Miss O'Mahony taking a few liberties with her lover, but still very affectionate. And we have seen her enjoying the badinage of perfect equality with her papa. There was nothing then of the ferocious young lady about her. Young ladies, – some young ladies, – can be very ferocious. Miss O'Mahony appeared to be one of them. As she stood under the iron post waiting till her father and Mr. Moss returned, with two porters carrying the luggage, the pretty little fair, fly-away Rachel looked as though she had in her hand the dagger of which she had once spoken, and was waiting for an opportunity to use it.

"Is your maid here, Miss O'Mahony?" asked Mr. Moss.

"I haven't got a maid," said Rachel, looking at him as though she intended to annihilate him.

They all seated themselves in the carriage with their small parcels, leaving their luggage to come after them in a cab which Mr. Moss had had allowed to him. But they, the O'Mahonys, knew nothing of their immediate destination. It had been clearly the father's business to ask; but he was a man possessed of no presence of mind. Suddenly the idea struck Rachel, and she called out with a loud voice, "Father, where on earth are we going?"

"I suppose Mr. Moss can tell us."

"You are going to apartments which I have secured for Miss O'Mahony at considerable trouble," said Mr. Moss. "The theatres are all stirring."

"But we are not going to live in a theatre."

"The ladies of the theatres find only one situation convenient. They must live somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Strand. I have secured two sitting-rooms and two bedrooms on the first floor, overlooking the views at Brown's."

"Won't they cost money?" asked the father.

"Of course they will," said Rachel. "What fools we have been! We intended to go to some inn for one night till we could find a fitting place, – somewhere about Gower Street."

"Gower Street wouldn't do at all," said Mr. Moss. "The distance from everything would be very great." Two ideas passed at that moment through Rachel's mind. The first was that the distance might serve to keep Mr. Moss out of her sitting-room, and the second was that were she to succeed in doing this, she might be forced to go to his sitting-room. "I think Gower Street would be found to be inconvenient, Miss O'Mahony."

"Bloomsbury Square is very near. Here we are at the hotel. Now, father, before you have anything taken off the carriages, ask the prices."

Then Mr. Moss, still keeping his seat, made a little speech. "I think if Miss O'Mahony would allow me, I would counsel her against too rigid an economy. She will have heard of the old proverb, – 'A penny wise and a pound foolish.'"

"'Cut your coat according to your cloth,' I have heard of that too; and I have heard of 'Burning a candle at both ends.'"

"'You shouldn't spoil your ship for a ha'porth of tar,'" said Mr. Moss with a smile, which showed his idea, that he had the best of the argument.

"It won't matter for one night," said Mr. O'Mahony, getting out of the carriage. Half the packages had been already taken off the cab.

Rachel followed her father, and without attending to Mr. Moss got hold of her father in the street. "I don't like the look of the house at all, father, you don't know what the people would be up to. I shall never go to sleep in this house." Mr. Moss, with his hat off, was standing in the doorway, suffused, as to his face, with a bland smile.

It may be as well to say at once that the house was all that an hotel ought to be, excepting, perhaps, that the prices were a little high. The two sitting-rooms and the two bedrooms – with the maid's room, which had also been taken – did seem to be very heavy to Rachel, who knew down to a shilling – or rather, to a dollar, as she would have said – how much her father had in his pocket. Indefinite promises of great wealth had been also made to herself; but according to a scale suggested by Mr. Moss, a pound a night, out of which she would have to keep herself, was the remuneration immediately promised. Then a sudden thought struck Miss O'Mahony. They were still standing discussing the price in one of the sitting-rooms, and Mr. Moss was also there. "Father," she said, "I'm sure that Frank would not approve."

"I don't think that he would feel himself bound to interfere," said Mr. O'Mahony.

"When a young woman is engaged to a young man it does make a difference," she replied, looking Mr. Moss full in the face.

"The happy man," said Mr. Moss, still bowing and smiling, "would not be so unreasonable as to interfere with the career of his fair fiancée."

"If we stay here very long," said Rachel, still addressing her father, "I guess we should have to pawn our watches. But here we are for the present, and here we must remain. I am awfully tired now, and should so like to have a cup of tea – by ourselves." Then Mr. Moss took his leave, promising to appear again upon the scene at eleven o'clock on the following day. "Thank you," said Rachel, "you are very kind, but I rather think I shall be out at eleven o'clock."

"What is the use of your carrying on like that with the man?" said her father.

"Because he's a beast."

"My dear, he's not a beast. He's not a beast that you ought to treat in that way. You'll be a beast too if you come to rise high in your profession. It is a kind of work which sharpens the intellect, but is apt to make men and women beasts. Did you ever hear of a prima donna who thought that another prima donna sang better than she did?"

"I guess that all the prima donnas sing better than I do."

"But you have not got to the position yet. Mr. Moss, I take it, was doing very well in New York, so as to have become a beast, as you call him. But he's very good-natured."

"He's a nasty, stuck-up, greasy Jew. A decent young woman is insulted by being spoken to by him."

"What made you tell him that you were engaged to Frank Jones?"

"I thought it might protect me – but it won't. I shall tell him next time that I am Frank's wife. But even that will not protect me."

"You will have to see him very often."

"And very often I shall have to be insulted. I guess he does the same kind of thing with all the singing girls who come into his hands."

"Give it up, Rachel."

"I don't mind being insulted so much as some girls do, you know. I can't fancy an English girl putting up with him – unless she liked to do as he pleased. I hate him; – but I think I can endure him. The only thing is, whether he would turn against me and rend me. Then we shall come utterly to the ground, here in London."

"Give it up."

"No! You can lecture and I can sing, and it's odd if we can't make one profession or the other pay. I think I shall have to fight with him, but I won't give it up. What I am afraid is that Frank should appear on the scene. And then, oh law! if Mr. Moss should get one blow in the eye!"

There she sat, sipping her tea and eating her toast, with her feet upon the fender, while Mr. O'Mahony ate his mutton-chop and drank his whisky and water.

"Father, now I'm coming back to my temper, I want something better than this buttered toast. Could they get me a veal cutlet, or a bit of cold chicken?"

A waiter was summoned.

"And you must give me a little bit of ham with the cold chicken. No, father; I won't have any wine because it would get into my head, and then I should kill Mr. Mahomet M. Moss."

"My dear," said her father when the man had left the room, "do you wish to declare all your animosities before the waiter?"

"Well, yes, I think I do. If we are to remain here it will be better that they should all know that I regard this man as my schoolmaster. I know what I'm about; I don't let a word go without thinking of it."

Then again they remained silent, and Mr. O'Mahony pretended to go to sleep – and eventually did do so. He devoted himself for the time to Home Rule, and got himself into a frame of mind in which he really thought of Ireland.

"The first flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea."

Why should she not be so? She had all the sentiment necessary, all the poetry, all the eloquence, all the wit. And then when he was beginning to think whether something more than sentiment and eloquence were not necessary, he went to sleep.

But Rachel was not sleeping. Her thoughts were less stationary than her father's, and her ideas more realistic. She had been told that she could sing, and she had sung at New York with great applause. And she had gone on studying, or rather practising, the art with great diligence. She had already become aware that practice was more needed than study. All, nearly all, this man could teach her was to open her mouth. Nature had given her an ear, and a voice, if she would work hard so as to use it. It was there before her. But it had seemed to her that her career was clogged with the necessary burden of Mr. Moss. Mr. Moss had got hold of her, and how should she get rid of him? He was the Old Man of the Sea, and how should she shake him off? And then there was present to her alone a vision of Frank Jones. To live at Morony Castle and be Frank Jones's wife, would not that be sweeter than to sing at a theatre under the care of Mr. Mahomet M. Moss? All the sweetness of a country life in a pleasant house by the lake side, and a husband with her who would endure all the little petulancy, and vagaries, and excesses of her wayward but affectionate temper, all these things were present to her mind. And to be Mistress Jones, who could look all the world in the face, this – as compared with the gaslight of a theatre, which might mean failure, and could only mean gaslight – this, on the present occasion, did tempt her sorely. Her moods were very various. There were moments of her life when the gaslight had its charm, and in which she declared to herself that she was willing to run all the chances of failure for the hope of success. There were moments in which Mr. Moss loomed less odious before her eyes. Should she be afraid of Mr. Moss, and fly from her destiny because a man was greasy? And to this view of her circumstances she always came at last when her father's condition pressed itself upon her. The house beside the lake was not her own as yet, nor would it be her husband's when she was married.

Nor could there be a home for her father there as long as old Mr. Jones was alive, nor possibly when his son should come to the throne. For a time he must go to America, and she must go with him. She had declared to herself that she could not go back to the United States unless she could go back as a successful singer. For these reasons she resolved that she would face Mr. Moss bravely and all his horrors.

"If that gentleman comes here to-morrow at eleven, show him up here," she said to the waiter.

"Mr. Moss, ma'am?" the waiter asked.

"Yes, Mr. Moss," she answered in a loud voice, which told the man much of her story. "Where did that piano come from?" she asked brusquely.

"Mr. Moss had it sent in," said the man.

"And my father is paying separate rent for it?" she asked.

"What's that, my dear? What's that about rent?"

"We have got this piano to pay for. It's one of Erard's. Mr. Moss has sent it, and of course we must pay till we have sent it back again. That'll do." Then the man went.

"It's my belief that he intends to get us into pecuniary difficulties. You have only got £62 left."

"But you are to have twenty shillings a day till Christmas."

"What's that?"

"According to what he says it will be increased after Christmas. He spoke of £2 a day."

"Yes; if my singing be approved of. But who is to be the judge? If the musical world choose to say that they must have Rachel O'Mahony, that will be all very well. Am I to sing at twenty shillings a day for just as long as Mr. Moss may want me? And are we to remain here, and run up a bill which we shall never be able to pay, till they put us out of the door and call us swindlers?"

"Frank Jones would help us at a pinch if we came to that difficulty," said the father.

"I wouldn't take a shilling from Frank Jones. Frank Jones is all the world to me, but he cannot help me till he has made me his wife. We must go out of this at the end of the first week, and send the piano back. As far as I can make it out, our expenses here will be about £17 10s. a week. What the piano will cost, I don't know; but we'll learn that from Mr. Moss. I'll make him understand that we can't stay here, having no more than twenty shillings a day. If he won't undertake to give me £2 a day immediately after Christmas, we must go back to New York while we've got money left to take us."

"Have it your own way," said Mr. O'Mahony.

"I don't mean to remain here and wake up some morning and find that I can't stir a step without asking Mahomet M. M. for some money favour. I know I can sing; I can sing, at any rate, to the extent of forty shillings a day. For forty shillings a day I'll stay; but if I can't earn that at once let us go back to New York. It is not the poverty I mind so much, nor yet the debt, nor yet even your distress, you dear old father. You and I could weather it out together on a twopenny roll. Things would never be altogether bad with us as long as we are together; and as long as we have not put ourselves in the power of Mahomet M. M. Fancy owing Mr. Moss a sum of money which we couldn't pay! Mahomet's 'little bill!' I would say to a Christian: 'All right, Mr. Christian, you shall have your money in good time, and if you don't it won't hurt you.' He wouldn't be any more than an ordinary Christian, and would pull a long face; but he would have no little scheme ready, cut and dry, for getting my body and soul under his thumb."

"You are very unchristian yourself, my dear."

"I certainly have my own opinion of Mahomet M. M., and I shall tell him to-morrow morning that I don't mean to run the danger."

Then they went to bed, and slept the sleep of the just. They ordered breakfast at nine, so that, as Rachel said, the heavy mutton-chop might not be sticking in her throat as she attempted to show off before Mr. Moss on his arrival. But from eight till nine she passed her time in the double employment of brushing her hair and preparing the conversation as it was to take place between herself and Mr. Moss. When a young lady boasts that she doesn't "let a word go without thinking of it," she has to be careful in preparing her words. And she prepared them now.

"There will be two of them against me," she said to herself as she made the preparation. "There'll be the dear old governor, and the governor that isn't dear. If I were left quite to myself, I think I could do it easier. But then it might come to sticking a knife into him."

"Father," she said, during breakfast, "I'm going to practise for half an hour before this man comes."

"That means that I'm to go away."

"Not in the least. I shall go into the next room where the piano lives, and you can come or not just as you please. I shall be squalling all the time, and as we do have the grandeur of two rooms for the present, you might as well use them. But when he comes we must take care and see that matters go right. You had better leave us alone at first, that I may sing to him. Then, when that's over, do you be in waiting to be called in. I mean to have a little bit of business with my trusted agent, manager, and parent in music, 'Mahomet M. M.'"

She went to the instrument, and practised there till half-past eleven, at which hour Mr. Moss presented himself. "You'll want to hear me sing of course," she said without getting up from the music-stool.

"Just a bar or two to know how you have improved. But it is hardly necessary. I see from the motion of your lips that you have been keeping your mouth open. And I hear from the tone of your voice, that it is all there. There is no doubt about you, if you have practised opening your mouth."

"At any rate you shall hear, and if you will stand there you shall see."

Then the music lesson began, and Mr. Moss proved himself to be an adept in his art. Rachel did not in the least doubt his skill, and obeyed him in everything as faithfully as she would have done, had he been personally a favourite with her. "Allow me to express my great delight and my strong admiration for the young débutante. As far as Miss O'Mahony is concerned the word failure may be struck out of the language. And no epithet should be used to qualify success, but one in the most superlative degree. Allow me to – " And he attempted to raise her hand to his lips, and to express his homage in a manner certainly not unusual with gentlemen of his profession.

"Mr. Moss," said the young lady starting up, "there need be nothing of that kind. There had better not. When a young woman is going to be married to a young man, she can't be too careful. You don't know, perhaps, but I'm going to be Mrs. Jones. Mr. Jones is apt to dislike such things. If you'll wait half a moment, I'll bring papa in." So saying she ran out of the room, and in two minutes returned, followed by her father. The two men shook hands, and each of them looked as though he did not know what he was expected to say to the other. "Now then, father, you must arrange things with Mr. Moss."

Mr. Moss bowed. "I don't exactly know what I have got to arrange," said Mr. O'Mahony.

"We've got to arrange so that we shan't get into debt with Mr. Moss."

"There need not be the least fear in the world as to that," said Mr. Moss.

"Ah; but that's just what we do fear, and what we must fear."

"So unnecessary, – so altogether unnecessary," said Mr. Moss, expecting to be allowed to be the banker for the occasion. "If you will just draw on me for what you want."

"But that is just what we won't do." Then there was a pause, and Mr. Moss shrugged his shoulders. "It's as well to understand that at the beginning. Of course this place is too expensive for us and we must get out of it as soon as possible."

"Why in such a hurry?" said Mr. Moss raising his two hands.

"And we must send back the piano. It was so good of you to think of it! But it must go back."

"No, no, no!" shouted Mr. Moss. "The piano is my affair. A piano more or less for a few months is nothing between me and Erard's people. They are only too happy."

"I do not in the least doubt it. Messrs. Erard's people are always glad to secure a lady who is about to come out as a singer. But they send the bill in at last."

"Not to you; – not to you."

"But to you. That would be a great deal worse, would it not, father? We might as well understand each other."

"Mr. O'Mahony and I will understand each other very well."

"But it is necessary that Miss O'Mahony and you should understand each other also. My father trusts me, and I cannot tell you how absolutely I obey him."

"Or he you," said Mr. Moss laughing.

"At any rate we two know what we are about, sir. You will not find us differing. Now Mr. Moss, you are to pay me twenty shillings a day."

"Till Christmas; – twenty shillings a night till Christmas."

"Of course we cannot live here on twenty shillings a day. The rooms nearly take it all. We can't live on twenty shillings a day, anyhow."

"Then make it forty shillings immediately after the Christmas holidays."

"I must have an agreement to that effect," said Rachel, "or we must go back to Ireland. I must have the agreement before Christmas, or we shall go back. We have a few pounds which will take us away."

"You must not speak of going away, really, Miss O'Mahony."

"Then I must have an agreement signed. You understand that. And we shall look for cheaper rooms to-day. There is a little street close by where we can manage it. But on the one thing we are determined; – we will not get into debt."