Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (61 page)

Spring had waxed to summer, summer waned to autumn. Then my aunt and I one morning, waiting at the breakfast table, saw through the open window my mother skipping, dancing, pirouetting up the garden path. She held a letter open in her hand, which as she drew near she waved about her head, singing:

“Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, then comes Wednesday morning.”

She caught me to her and began dancing with me round the room.

Observed my aunt, who continued steadily to eat bread and butter:

“Just like ’em all. Goes mad with joy. What for? Because she’s going to leave a decent house, to live in a poky hole in the East End of London, and keep one servant.”

To my aunt the second person ever remained a grammatical superfluity. Invariably she spoke not to but of a person, throwing out her conversation in the form of commentary. This had the advantage of permitting the party intended to ignore it as mere impersonal philosophy. Seeing it was generally uncomplimentary, most people preferred so to regard it; but my mother had never succeeded in schooling herself to indifference.

“It’s not a poky hole,” she replied; “it’s an old-fashioned house, near the river.”

“Plaistow marshes!” ejaculated my aunt, “calls it the river!”

“So it is the river,” returned my mother; “the river is the other side of the marshes.”

“Let’s hope it will always stop there,” said my aunt.

“And it’s got a garden,” continued my mother, ignoring my aunt’s last remark; “which is quite an unusual feature in a London house. And it isn’t the East End of London; it is a rising suburb. And you won’t make me miserable because I am too happy.”

“Drat the woman!” said my aunt, “why can’t she sit down and give us our tea before it’s all cold?”

“You are a disagreeable thing!” said my mother.

“Not half milk,” said my aunt. My aunt was never in the least disturbed by other people’s opinion of her, which was perhaps well for her.

For three days my mother packed and sang; and a dozen times a day unpacked and laughed, looking for things wanted that were always found at the very bottom of the very last box looked into, so that Anna, waiting for a certain undergarment of my aunt’s which shall be nameless, suggested a saving of time:

“If I were you, ma’am,” said Anna, “I’d look into the last box you’re going to look into first.”

But it was found eventually in the first box-the box, that is, my mother had intended to search first, but which, acting on Anna’s suggestion, she had reserved till the last. This caused my mother to be quite short with Anna, who she said had wasted her time. But by Tuesday afternoon all stood ready: we were to start early Wednesday morning.

That evening, missing my mother in the house, I sought her in the garden and found her, as I had expected, on her favourite seat under the great lime tree; but to my surprise there were tears in her eyes.

“But I thought you were glad we were going,” I said.

“So I am,” answered my mother, drying her eyes only to make room for fresh tears.

“Then why are you crying?”

“Because I’m sorry to leave here.”

Grown-up folks with their contradictory ways were a continual puzzle to me in those days; I am not sure I quite understand them even now, myself included.

We were up and off next day before the dawn. The sun rose as the wagon reached the top of the hill; and there we paused and took our farewell look at Old Jacob’s Tower. My mother cried a little behind her veil; but my aunt only said, “I never did care for earwigs in my tea;” and as for myself I was too excited and expectant to feel much sentiment about anything.

On the journey I sat next to an exceptionally large and heavy man, who in his sleep — and he slept often — imagined me to be a piece of stuffing out of place. Then, grunting and wriggling, he would endeavour to rub me out, until the continued irritation of my head between the window and his back would cause him to awake, when he would look down upon me reprovingly but not unkindly, observing to the carriage generally: “It’s a funny thing, ain’t it, nobody’s ever made a boy yet that could keep still for ten seconds.” After which he would pat me heartily on the head, to show he was not vexed with me, and fall to sleep again upon me. He was a good-tempered man.

My mother sat occupied chiefly with her own thoughts, and my aunt had found a congenial companion in a lady who had had her cap basket sat upon; so I was left mainly to my own resources. When I could get my head free of the big man’s back, I gazed out of the window, and watched the flying fragments as we shed the world. Now a village would fall from us, now the yellow corn-land would cling to us for awhile, or a wood catch at our rushing feet, and sometimes a strong town would stop us, and hold us, panting for a space. Or, my eyes weary, I would sit and listen to the hoarse singing of the wheels beneath my feet. It was a monotonous chaunt, ever the same two lines:

    “Here we suffer grief and pain,

    Here we meet to part again,”

followed by a low, rumbling laugh. Sometimes fortissimo, sometimes pianissimo; now vivace, now largo; but ever those same two lines, and ever followed by the same low, rumbling laugh; still to this day the iron wheels sing to me that same song.

Later on I also must have slept, for I dreamt that as the result of my having engaged in single combat with a dragon, the dragon, ignoring all the rules of Fairyland, had swallowed me. It was hot and stuffy in the dragon’s stomach. He had, so it appeared to me, disgracefully overeaten himself; there were hundreds of us there, entirely undigested, including Mother Hubbard and a gentleman named Johnson, against whom, at that period, I entertained a strong prejudice by reason of our divergent views upon the subject of spelling. Even in this hour of our mutual discomfort Johnson would not leave me alone, but persisted in asking me how I spelt Jonah. Nobody was looking, so I kicked him. He sprang up and came after me. I tried to run away, but became wedged between Hop-o’-my-Thumb and Julius Caesar. I suppose our tearing about must have hurt the dragon, for at that moment he gave vent to a most fearful scream, and I awoke to find the fat man rubbing his left shin, while we struggled slowly, with steps growing ever feebler, against a sea of brick that every moment closed in closer round us.

We scrambled out of the carriage into a great echoing cave that might have been the dragon’s home, where, to my alarm, my mother was immediately swooped down upon by a strange man in grey.

“Why’s he do that?” I asked of my aunt.

“Because he’s a fool,” answered my aunt; “they all are.”

He put my mother down and came towards us. He was a tall, thin man, with eyes one felt one would never be afraid of; and instinctively even then I associated him in my mind with windmills and a lank white horse.

“Why, how he’s grown,” said the grey man, raising me in his arms until my mother beside me appeared to me in a new light as quite a little person; “and solid too.”

My mother whispered something. I think from her face, for I knew the signs, it was praise of me.

“And he’s going to be our new fortune,” she added aloud, as the grey man lowered me.

“Then,” said my aunt, who had this while been sitting rigid upon a flat black box, “don’t drop him down a coal-mine. That’s all I say.”

I wondered at the time why the grey man’s pale face should flush so crimson, and why my mother should whisper angrily:

“Flow can you be so wicked, Fanny? How dare you say such a thing?”

“I only said ‘don’t drop him down a coal-mine,’” returned my aunt, apparently much surprised; “you don’t want to drop him down a coal-mine, do you?”

We passed through glittering, joyous streets, piled high each side with all the good things of the earth; toys and baubles, jewels and gold, things good to eat and good to drink, things good to wear and good to see; through pleasant ways where fountains splashed and flowers bloomed. The people wore bright clothes, had happy faces. They rode in beautiful carriages, they strolled about, greeting one another with smiles. The children ran and laughed. London, thought I to myself, is the city of the fairies.

It passed, and we sank into a grim city of hoarse, roaring streets, wherein the endless throngs swirled and surged as I had seen the yellow waters curve and fret, contending, where the river pauses, rock-bound. Here were no bright costumes, no bright faces, none stayed to greet another; all was stern, and swift, and voiceless. London, then, said I to myself, is the city of the giants. They must live in these towering castles side by side, and these hurrying thousands are their driven slaves.

But this passed also, and we sank lower yet until we reached a third city, where a pale mist filled each sombre street. None of the beautiful things of the world were to be seen here, but only the things coarse and ugly. And wearily to and fro its sunless passages trudged with heavy steps a weary people, coarse-clad, and with dull, listless faces. And London, I knew, was the city of the gnomes who labour sadly all their lives, imprisoned underground; and a terror seized me lest I, too, should remain chained here, deep down below the fairy city that was already but a dream.

We stopped at last in a long, unfinished street. I remember our pushing our way through a group of dirty urchins, all of whom, my aunt remarked in passing, ought to be skinned. It was my aunt’s one prescription for all to whom she took objection; but really in the present instance I think it would have been of service; nothing else whatever could have restored them to cleanliness. Then the door closed behind us with an echoing clang, and the small, cold rooms came forward stiffly to greet us.

The man in grey went to the one window and drew back the curtain; it was growing dusk now. My aunt sat on a straight, hard chair and stared fixedly at the three-armed gaselier. My mother stood in the centre of the room with one small ungloved hand upon the table, and I noticed — for I was very near — that the poor little one-legged thing was trembling.

“Of course it’s not what you’ve been accustomed to, Maggie,” said the man in grey; “but it’s only for a little while.”

He spoke in a new, angry voice; but I could not see his face, his back being to the light.

My mother drew his arms around us both.

“It is the best home in all the world,” she said; and thus we stayed for awhile.

“Nonsense,” said my aunt, suddenly; and this aroused us; “it’s a poky hole, as I told her it would be. Let her thank the Lord she’s got a man clever enough to get her out of it. I know him; he never could rest where he was put. Now he’s at the bottom; he’ll go up.”

It sounded to me a very disagreeable speech; but the grey man laughed — I had not heard him laugh till then — and my mother ran to my aunt and kissed her; and somehow the room seemed to become lighter.

For some reason I slept downstairs that night, on the floor, behind a screen improvised out of a clothes horse and a blanket; and later in the evening the clatter of knives and forks and the sound of subdued voices awoke me. My aunt had apparently gone to bed; my mother and the man in grey were talking together over their supper.

“We must buy land,” said the voice of the grey man; “London is coming this way. The Somebodies” (I forget the name my father mentioned) “made all their money by buying up land round New York for a mere song. Then, as the city spread, they became worth millions.”

“But where will you get the money from, Luke?” asked the voice of my mother.

The voice of the grey man answered airily:

“Oh, that’s merely a matter of business. You grant a mortgage. The property goes up in value. You borrow more. Then you buy more — and so on.”

“I see,” said my mother.

“Being on the spot gives one such an advantage,” said the grey man. “I shall know just when to buy. It’s a great thing, being on the spot.”

“Of course, it must be,” said my mother.

I suppose I must have dozed, for the next words I heard the grey man say were:

“Of course you have the park opposite, but then the house is small.”

“But shall we need a very large one?” asked my mother.

“One never knows,” said the grey man. “If I should go into Parliament—”

At this point a hissing sound arose from the neighbourhood of the fire.

“It
looks
,” said my mother, “as if it were done.”

“If you will hold the dish,” said the grey man, “I think I can pour it in without spilling.”

Again I must have dozed.

“It depends,” said the grey man, “upon what he is going to be. For the classics, of course, Oxford.”

“He’s going to be very clever,” said my mother. She spoke as one who knows.

“We’ll hope so,” said the grey man.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said my mother, “if he turned out a poet.”

The grey man said something in a low tone that I did not hear.

“I’m not so sure,” answered my mother, “it’s in the blood. I’ve often thought that you, Luke, ought to have been a poet.”

“I never had the time,” said the grey man. “There were one or two little things—”

“They were very beautiful,” interrupted my mother. The clatter of the knives and forks continued undisturbed for a few moments. Then continued the grey man:

“There would be no harm, provided I made enough. It’s the law of nature. One generation earns, the next spends. We must see. In any case, I think I should prefer Oxford for him.”

“It will be so hard parting from him,” said my mother.

“There will be the vacations,” said the grey man, “when we shall travel.”

CHAPTER II.

IN WHICH PAUL MAKES ACQUAINTANCE OF THE MAN WITH THE UGLY MOUTH.

The case of my father and mother was not normal. You understand they had been separated for some years, and though they were not young in age — indeed, before my childish eyes they loomed quite ancient folk, and in fact my father must have been nearly forty and my mother quit of thirty — yet, as you will come to think yourself, no doubt, during the course of my story, they were in all the essentials of life little more than boy and girl. This I came to see later on, but at that time, had I been consulted by enquiring maid or bachelor, I might unwittingly have given wrong impressions concerning marriage in the general. I should have described a husband as a man who could never rest quite content unless his wife were by his side; who twenty times a day would call from his office door: “Maggie, are you doing anything important? I want to talk to you about a matter of business.” ... “Maggie, are you alone? Oh, all right, I’ll come down.” Of a wife I should have said she was a woman whose eyes were ever love-lit when resting on her man; who was glad where he was and troubled where he was not. But in every case this might not have been correct.