Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (132 page)
Read Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) Online
Authors: Jerome K. Jerome
“It can be. I had not thought of it.”
They spoke in low, matter-of-fact tones, as people do who have grown weary of their own emotions.
“When did he go away — her husband?”
“About — it is February now, is it not? About eighteen months ago.”
“And died just eight months ago. Rather conveniently, poor fellow.”
“Yes, I’m glad he is dead — poor Lawrence.”
“What is the shortest time in which a marriage can be arranged?”
“I do not know,” he answered listlessly. “I do not intend to marry her.”
“You would leave her to bear it alone?”
“It is not as if she were a poor woman. You can do anything with money.”
“It will not mend reputation. Her position in society is everything to that class of woman.”
“My marrying her now,” he pointed out, “would not save her.”
“Practically speaking it would,” the girl pleaded. “The world does not go out of its way to find out things it does not want to know. Marry her as quietly as possible and travel for a year or two.”
“Why should I? Ah! it is easy enough to call a man a coward for defending himself against a woman. What is he to do when he is fighting for his life? Men do not sin with good women.”
“There is the child to be considered,” she urged—”your child. You see, dear, we all do wrong sometimes. We must not let others suffer for our fault more — more than we can help.”
He turned to her for the first time. “And you?”
“I? Oh, I shall cry for a little while, but later on I shall laugh, as often. Life is not all love. I have my work.”
He knew her well by this time. And also it came to him that it would be a finer thing to be worthy of her than even to possess her.
So he did her bidding and went out with the other woman. Tommy was glad it was press-night. She would not be able to think for hours to come, and then, perhaps, she would be feeling too tired. Work can be very kind.
Were this an artistic story, here, of course, one would write “Finis.” But in the workaday world one never knows the ending till it comes. Had it been otherwise, I doubt I could have found courage to tell you this story of Tommy. It is not all true — at least, I do not suppose so. One drifts unconsciously a little way into dream-land when one sits oneself down to recall the happenings of long ago; while Fancy, with a sly wink, whispers ever and again to Memory: “Let me tell this incident — picture that scene: I can make it so much more interesting than you would.” But Tommy — how can I put it without saying too much: there is someone I think of when I speak of her? To remember only her dear wounds, and not the healing of them, would have been a task too painful. I love to dwell on their next meeting. Flipp, passing him on the steps, did not know him, the tall, sunburnt gentleman with the sweet, grave-faced little girl.
“Seen that face somewhere before,” mused Flipp, as at the corner of Bedford Street he climbed into a hansom, “seen it somewhere on a thinner man.”
For Dick Danvers, that he did not recognise Flipp, there was more excuse. A very old young man had Flipp become at thirty. Flipp no longer enjoyed popular journalism. He produced it.
The gold-bound doorkeeper feared the mighty Clodd would be unable to see so insignificant an atom as an unappointed stranger, but would let the card of Mr. Richard Danvers plead for itself. To the gold-bound keeper’s surprise came down the message that Mr. Danvers was to be at once shown up.
“I thought, somehow, you would come to me first,” said the portly Clodd, advancing with out-stretched hand. “And this is — ?”
“My little girl, Honor. We have been travelling for the last few months.”
Clodd took the grave, small face between his big, rough hands:
“Yes. She is like you. But looks as if she were going to have more sense. Forgive me, I knew your father my dear,” laughed Clodd; “when he was younger.”
They lit their cigars and talked.
“Well, not exactly dead; we amalgamated it,” winked Clodd in answer to Danvers’ inquiry. “It was just a trifle
too
high-class. Besides, the old gentleman was not getting younger. It hurt him a little at first. But then came Tommy’s great success, and that has reconciled him to all things. Do they know you are in England?”
“No,” explained Danvers; “we arrived only last night.”
Clodd called directions down the speaking-tube.
“You will find hardly any change in her. One still has to keep one’s eye upon her chin. She has not even lost her old habit of taking stock of people. You remember.” Clodd laughed.
They talked a little longer, till there came a whistle, and Clodd put his ear to the tube.
“I have to see her on business,” said Clodd, rising; “you may as well come with me. They are still in the old place, Gough Square.”
Tommy was out, but Peter was expecting her every minute.
Peter did not know Dick, but would not admit it. Forgetfulness was a sign of age, and Peter still felt young.
“I know your face quite well,” said Peter; “can’t put a name to it, that’s all.”
Clodd whispered it to him, together with information bringing history up to date. And then light fell upon the old lined face. He came towards Dick, meaning to take him by both hands, but, perhaps because he had become somewhat feeble, he seemed glad when the younger man put his arms around him and held him for a moment. It was un-English, and both of them felt a little ashamed of themselves afterwards.
“What we want,” said Clodd, addressing Peter, “we three — you, I, and Miss Danvers — is tea and cakes, with cream in them; and I know a shop where they sell them. We will call back for your father in half an hour.” Clodd explained to Miss Danvers; “he has to talk over a matter of business with Miss Hope.”
“I know,” answered the grave-faced little person. She drew Dick’s face down to hers and kissed it. And then the three went out together, leaving Dick standing by the window.
“Couldn’t we hide somewhere till she comes?” suggested Miss Danvers. “I want to see her.”
So they waited in the open doorway of a near printing-house till Tommy drove up. Both Peter and Clodd watched the child’s face with some anxiety. She nodded gravely to herself three times, then slipped her hand into Peter’s.
Tommy opened the door with her latchkey and passed in.
THEY AND I
This novel was published in 1909 and is a humorous account of a hapless family who find rural life to be more than they bargained for after they decide to move from the town to the countryside. Jerome’s first biographer, Alfred Moss, described the novel as “a cheerful companion to take with you when you go for a holiday to get cured of the hump”, explaining how it was popular with the soldiers in France during the First World War.
Title page of the first edition
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
“It is not a large house,” I said. “We don’t want a large house. Two spare bedrooms, and the little three-cornered place you see marked there on the plan, next to the bathroom, and which will just do for a bachelor, will be all we shall require — at all events, for the present. Later on, if I ever get rich, we can throw out a wing. The kitchen I shall have to break to your mother gently. Whatever the original architect could have been thinking of—”
“Never mind the kitchen,” said Dick: “what about the billiard-room?”
The way children nowadays will interrupt a parent is nothing short of a national disgrace. I also wish Dick would not sit on the table, swinging his legs. It is not respectful. “Why, when I was a boy,” as I said to him, “I should as soon have thought of sitting on a table, interrupting my father—”
“What’s this thing in the middle of the hall, that looks like a grating?” demanded Robina.
“She means the stairs,” explained Dick.
“Then why don’t they look like stairs?” commented Robina.
“They do,” replied Dick, “to people with sense.”
“They don’t,” persisted Robina, “they look like a grating.” Robina, with the plan spread out across her knee, was sitting balanced on the arm of an easy-chair. Really, I hardly see the use of buying chairs for these people. Nobody seems to know what they are for — except it be one or another of the dogs. Perches are all they want.
“If we threw the drawing-room into the hall and could do away with the stairs,” thought Robina, “we should be able to give a dance now and then.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “you would like to clear out the house altogether, leaving nothing but the four bare walls. That would give us still more room, that would. For just living in, we could fix up a shed in the garden; or—”
“I’m talking seriously,” said Robina: “what’s the good of a drawing-room? One only wants it to show the sort of people into that one wishes hadn’t come. They’d sit about, looking miserable, just as well anywhere else. If we could only get rid of the stairs—”
“Oh, of course! we could get rid of the stairs,” I agreed. “It would be a bit awkward at first, when we wanted to go to bed. But I daresay we should get used to it. We could have a ladder and climb up to our rooms through the windows. Or we might adopt the Norwegian method and have the stairs outside.”
“I wish you would be sensible,” said Robin.
“I am trying to be,” I explained; “and I am also trying to put a little sense into you. At present you are crazy about dancing. If you had your way, you would turn the house into a dancing-saloon with primitive sleeping-accommodation attached. It will last six months, your dancing craze. Then you will want the house transformed into a swimming-bath, or a skating-rink, or cleared out for hockey. My idea may be conventional. I don’t expect you to sympathise with it. My notion is just an ordinary Christian house, not a gymnasium. There are going to be bedrooms in this house, and there’s going to be a staircase leading to them. It may strike you as sordid, but there is also going to be a kitchen: though why when building the house they should have put the kitchen —
“Don’t forget the billiard-room,” said Dick.
“If you thought more of your future career and less about billiards,” Robin pointed out to him, “perhaps you’d get through your Little-go in the course of the next few years. If Pa only had sense — I mean if he wasn’t so absurdly indulgent wherever you are concerned, he would not have a billiard-table in the house.”
“You talk like that,” retorted Dick, “merely because you can’t play.”
“I can beat you, anyhow,” retorted Robin.
“Once,” admitted Dick—”once in six weeks.”
“Twice,” corrected Robin.
“You don’t play,” Dick explained to her; “you just whack round and trust to Providence.”
“I don’t whack round,” said Robin; “I always aim at something. When you try and it doesn’t come off, you say it’s ‘hard luck;’ and when I try and it does come off, you say it’s fluking. So like a man.”
“You both of you,” I said, “attach too much importance to the score. When you try for a cannon off the white and hit it on the wrong side and send it into a pocket, and your own ball travels on and makes a losing hazard off the red, instead of being vexed with yourselves—”
“If you get a really good table, governor,” said Dick, “I’ll teach you billiards.”
I do believe Dick really thinks he can play. It is the same with golf. Beginners are invariably lucky. “I think I shall like it,” they tell you; “I seem to have the game in me, if you understand.”
‘There is a friend of mine, an old sea-captain. He is the sort of man that when the three balls are lying in a straight line, tucked up under the cushion, looks pleased; because then he knows he can make a cannon and leave the red just where he wants it. An Irish youngster named Malooney, a college chum of Dick’s, was staying with us; and the afternoon being wet, the Captain said he would explain it to Malooney, how a young man might practise billiards without any danger of cutting the cloth. He taught him how to hold the cue, and he told him how to make a bridge. Malooney was grateful, and worked for about an hour. He did not show much promise. He is a powerfully built young man, and he didn’t seem able to get it into his head that he wasn’t playing cricket. Whenever he hit a little low the result was generally lost ball. To save time — and damage to furniture — Dick and I fielded for him. Dick stood at long-stop, and I was short slip. It was dangerous work, however, and when Dick had caught him out twice running, we agreed that we had won, and took him in to tea. In the evening — none of the rest of us being keen to try our luck a second time — the Captain said, that just for the joke of the thing he would give Malooney eighty-five and play him a hundred up. To confess the truth, I find no particular fun myself in playing billiards with the Captain. The game consists, as far as I am concerned, in walking round the table, throwing him back the balls, and saying “Good!” By the time my turn comes I don’t seem to care what happens: everything seems against me. He is a kind old gentleman and he means well, but the tone in which he says “Hard lines!” whenever I miss an easy stroke irritates me. I feel I’d like to throw the balls at his head and fling the table out of window. I suppose it is that I am in a fretful state of mind, but the mere way in which he chalks his cue aggravates me. He carries his own chalk in his waistcoat pocket — as if our chalk wasn’t good enough for him — and when he has finished chalking, he smooths the tip round with his finger and thumb and taps the cue against the table. “Oh! go on with the game,” I want to say to him; “don’t be so full of tricks.”