Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (304 page)

Her anger with him was such that it rendered her absolutely polite. It had that occasional effect upon her. She slid from the arm of his chair and stood beside him, a rigid figure of frozen femininity.

“I think you are quite right, Uncle Herrick. Good night!” But at the door she could not resist a parting shot:

“You might have been my father, and then perhaps she wouldn’t have died. I think it was very wicked of you.”

After she was gone Abner sat gazing into the fire, and his pipe went out. Eventually the beginnings of a smile stole to the corners of his mouth, but before it could spread any farther he dismissed it with a sigh.

Abner, for the next day or two, feared a renewal of the conversation, but Ann appeared to have forgotten it; and as time went by it faded from Abner’s own memory. Until one evening quite a while later.

The morning had brought him his English mail. It had been arriving with some regularity, and Ann had noticed that Abner always opened it before his other correspondence. One letter he read through twice, and Ann, who was pretending to be reading the newspaper, felt that he was looking at her.

“I have been thinking, my dear,” said Abner, “that it must be rather lonely for you here, all by yourself.”

“It would be,” answered Ann, “if I were here all by myself.”

“I mean,” said Abner, “without any other young person to talk to and — and to play with.”

“You forget,” said Ann, “that I’m nearly thirteen.”

“God bless my soul,” said Abner. “How time does fly!”

“Who is she?” asked Ann.

“It isn’t a ‘she,’” explained Abner. “It’s a ‘he.’ Poor little chap lost his mother two years ago, and now his father’s dead. I thought — it occurred to me we might put him up for a time. Look after him a bit. What do you think? It would make the house more lively, wouldn’t it?”

“It might,” said Ann.

She sat very silent, and Abner, whose conscience was troubling him, watched her a little anxiously. After a time she looked up.

“What’s he like?” she asked.

“Precisely what I am wondering myself,” confessed Abner. “We shall have to wait and see. But his mother — his mother,” repeated Abner, “was the most beautiful woman I have ever known. If he is anything like she was as a girl—” He left the sentence unfinished.

“You have not seen her since — since she was young?” questioned Ann.

Abner shook his head. “She married an Englishman. He took her back with him to London.”

“I don’t like Englishmen,” said Ann.

“They have their points,” suggested Abner. “Besides, boys take after their mothers, they say.” And Abner rose and gathered his letters together.

Ann remained very thoughtful all that day. In the evening, when Abner for a moment laid down his pen for the purpose of relighting his pipe, Ann came to him, seating herself on the corner of the desk.

“I suppose,” she said, “that’s why you never married mother?”

Abner’s mind at the moment was much occupied with the Panama Canal.

“What mother?” he asked. “Whose mother?”

“My mother,” answered Ann. “I suppose men are like that.”

“What are you talking about?” said Abner, dismissing altogether the Panama Canal.

“You loved my mother very much,” explained Ann with cold deliberation. “She always made you think of Wordsworth’s perfect woman.”

“Who told you all that?” demanded Abner.

“You did.”

“I did?”

“It was the day you took me away from Miss Carew’s because she said she couldn’t manage me,” Ann informed him.

“Good Lord! Why, that must be two years ago,” mused Abner.

“Three,” Ann corrected him. “All but a few days.”

“I wish you’d use your memory for things you’re wanted to remember,” growled Abner.

“You said you had never asked her to marry you,” pursued Ann relentlessly; “you wouldn’t tell me why. You said I shouldn’t understand.”

“My fault,” muttered Abner. “I forget you’re a child. You ask all sorts of questions that never ought to enter your head, and I’m fool enough to answer you.”

One small tear that had made its escape unnoticed by her was stealing down her cheek. He wiped it away and took one of her small paws in both his hands.

“I loved your mother very dearly,” he said gravely. “I had loved her from a child. But no woman will ever understand the power that beauty has upon a man. You see we’re built that way. It’s Nature’s lure. Later on, of course, I might have forgotten; but then it was too late. Can you forgive me?”

“But you still love her,” reasoned Ann through her tears, “or you wouldn’t want him to come here.”

“She had such a hard time of it,” pleaded Abner. “It made things easier to her, my giving her my word that I would always look after the boy. You’ll help me?”

“I’ll try,” said Ann. But there was not much promise in the tone.

Nor did Matthew Pole himself, when he arrived, do much to help matters. He was so hopelessly English. At least, that was the way Ann put it. He was shy and sensitive. It is a trying combination. It made him appear stupid and conceited. A lonely childhood had rendered him unsociable, unadaptable. A dreamy, imaginative temperament imposed upon him long moods of silence: a liking for long solitary walks. For the first time Ann and Mrs. Travers were in agreement.

“A sulky young dog,” commented Mrs. Travers. “If I were your uncle I’d look out for a job for him in San Francisco.”

“You see,” said Ann in excuse for him, “it’s such a foggy country, England. It makes them like that.”

“It’s a pity they can’t get out of it,” said Mrs. Travers.

Also, sixteen is an awkward age for a boy. Virtues, still in the chrysalis state, are struggling to escape from their parent vices. Pride, an excellent quality making for courage and patience, still appears in the swathings of arrogance. Sincerity still expresses itself in the language of rudeness. Kindness itself is apt to be mistaken for amazing impertinence and love of interference.

It was kindness — a genuine desire to be useful, that prompted him to point out to Ann her undoubted faults and failings, nerved him to the task of bringing her up in the way she should go. Mrs. Travers had long since washed her hands of the entire business. Uncle Ab, as Matthew also called him, had proved himself a weakling. Providence, so it seemed to Matthew, must have been waiting impatiently for his advent. Ann at first thought it was some new school of humour. When she found he was serious she set herself to cure him. But she never did. He was too conscientious for that. The instincts of the guide, philosopher, and friend to humanity in general were already too strong in him. There were times when Abner almost wished that Matthew Pole senior had lived a little longer.

But he did not lose hope. At the back of his mind was the fancy that these two children of his loves would come together. Nothing is quite so sentimental as a healthy old bachelor. He pictured them making unity from his confusions; in imagination heard the patter on the stairs of tiny feet. To all intents and purposes he would be a grandfather. Priding himself on his cunning, he kept his dream to himself, as he thought, but under-estimated Ann’s smartness.

For days together she would follow Matthew with her eyes, watching him from behind her long lashes, listening in silence to everything he said, vainly seeking to find points in him. He was unaware of her generous intentions. He had a vague feeling he was being criticised. He resented it even in those days.

“I do try,” said Ann suddenly one evening apropos of nothing at all. “No one will ever know how hard I try not to dislike him.”

Abner looked up.

“Sometimes,” continued Ann, “I tell myself I have almost succeeded. And then he will go and do something that will bring it all on again.”

“What does he do?” asked Abner.

“Oh, I can’t tell you,” confessed Ann. “If I told you it would sound as if it was my fault. It’s all so silly. And then he thinks such a lot of himself. If one only knew why! He can’t tell you himself when you ask him.”

“You have asked him?” queried Abner.

“I wanted to know,” explained Ann. “I thought there might be something in him that I could like.”

“Why do you want to like him?” asked Abner, wondering how much she had guessed.

“I know,” wailed Ann. “You are hoping that when I am grown up I shall marry him. And I don’t want to. It’s so ungrateful of me.”

“Well, you’re not grown up yet,” Abner consoled her. “And so long as you are feeling like that about it, I’m not likely to want you to marry him.”

“It would make you so happy,” sobbed Ann.

“Yes, but we’ve got to think of the boy, don’t forget that,” laughed Abner. “Perhaps he might object.”

“He would. I know he would,” cried Ann with conviction. “He’s no better than I am.”

“Have you been asking him to?” demanded Abner, springing up from his chair.

“Not to marry me,” explained Ann. “But I told him he must be an unnatural little beast not to try to like me when he knew how you loved me.”

“Helpful way of putting it,” growled Abner. “And what did he say to that?”

“Admitted it,” flashed Ann indignantly. “Said he had tried.”

Abner succeeded in persuading her that the path of dignity and virtue lay in her dismissing the whole subject from her mind.

He had made a mistake, so he told himself. Age may be attracted by contrast, but youth has no use for its opposite. He would send Matthew away. He could return for week-ends. Continually so close to one another, they saw only one another’s specks and flaws; there is no beauty without perspective. Matthew wanted the corners rubbed off him, that was all. Mixing more with men, his priggishness would be laughed out of him. Otherwise he was quite a decent youngster, clean minded, high principled. Clever, too: he often said quite unexpected things. With approaching womanhood, changes were taking place in Ann. Seeing her every day one hardly noticed them; but there were times when, standing before him flushed from a walk or bending over him to kiss him before starting for some friendly dance, Abner would blink his eyes and be puzzled. The thin arms were growing round and firm; the sallow complexion warming into olive; the once patchy, mouse-coloured hair darkening into a rich harmony of brown. The eyes beneath her level brows, that had always been her charm, still reminded Abner of her mother; but there was more light in them, more danger.

“I’ll run down to Albany and talk to Jephson about him,” decided Abner. “He can come home on Saturdays.”

The plot might have succeeded: one never can tell. But a New York blizzard put a stop to it. The cars broke down, and Abner, walking home in thin shoes from a meeting, caught a chill, which, being neglected, proved fatal.

Abner was troubled as he lay upon his bed. The children were sitting very silent by the window. He sent Matthew out on a message, and then beckoned Ann to come to him. He loved the boy, too, but Ann was nearer to him.

“You haven’t thought any more,” he whispered, “about—”

“No,” answered Ann. “You wished me not to.”

“You must never think,” he said, “to show your love for my memory by doing anything that would not make you happy. If I am anywhere around,” he continued with a smile, “it will be your good I shall be watching for, not my own way. You will remember that?”

He had meant to do more for them, but the end had come so much sooner than he had expected. To Ann he left the house (Mrs. Travers had already retired on a small pension) and a sum that, judiciously invested, the friend and attorney thought should be sufficient for her needs, even supposing — The friend and attorney, pausing to dwell upon the oval face with its dark eyes, left the sentence unfinished.

To Matthew he wrote a loving letter, enclosing a thousand dollars. He knew that Matthew, now in a position to earn his living as a journalist, would rather have taken nothing. It was to be looked upon merely as a parting gift. Matthew decided to spend it on travel. It would fit him the better for his journalistic career, so he explained to Ann. But in his heart he had other ambitions. It would enable him to put them to the test.

So there came an evening when Ann stood waving a handkerchief as a great liner cast its moorings. She watched it till its lights grew dim, and then returned to West Twentieth Street. Strangers would take possession of it on the morrow. Ann had her supper in the kitchen in company with the nurse, who had stayed on at her request; and that night, slipping noiselessly from her room, she lay upon the floor, her head resting against the arm of the chair where Abner had been wont to sit and smoke his evening pipe; somehow it seemed to comfort her. And Matthew the while, beneath the stars, was pacing the silent deck of the great liner and planning out the future.

To only one other being had he ever confided his dreams. She lay in the churchyard; and there was nothing left to encourage him but his own heart. But he had no doubts. He would be a great writer. His two hundred pounds would support him till he had gained a foothold. After that he would climb swiftly. He had done right, so he told himself, to turn his back on journalism: the grave of literature. He would see men and cities, writing as he went. Looking back, years later, he was able to congratulate himself on having chosen the right road. He thought it would lead him by easy ascent to fame and fortune. It did better for him than that. It led him through poverty and loneliness, through hope deferred and heartache — through long nights of fear, when pride and confidence fell upon him, leaving him only the courage to endure.

His great poems, his brilliant essays, had been rejected so often that even he himself had lost all love for them. At the suggestion of an editor more kindly than the general run, and urged by need, he had written some short pieces of a less ambitious nature. It was in bitter disappointment he commenced them, regarding them as mere pot-boilers. He would not give them his name. He signed them “Aston Rowant.” It was the name of the village in Oxfordshire where he had been born. It occurred to him by chance. It would serve the purpose as well as another. As the work progressed it grew upon him. He made his stories out of incidents and people he had seen; everyday comedies and tragedies that he had lived among, of things that he had felt; and when after their appearance in the magazine a publisher was found willing to make them into a book, hope revived in him.