Mr. Tasker's Gods (14 page)

M
RS. FANCY valued her furniture. When she prayed for protection, she thought about her furniture. She had bought the greater part of it during the reign of her husband and Queen Victoria. She knew every piece by heart; she could trace them back to the shop, to the day, to the hour, that she had bought them. She could even remember the weather, and a little storm of rain that came on at half-past three just thirty years ago, on the day that she bought the
rocking-chair
. That was before the plush suite came into being. The rocking-chair was then placed by the window in the best room: it was now in the lodgers’ bedroom.

The only matter about her furniture that changed in her memory was the price that she had paid; that price grew larger every year. When once an old-fashioned ware-dealer called upon her and asked if she had anything old to sell, she took him upstairs and showed him the rocking-chair, and she said that he could have it for nine pounds. The dealer fled the street and only stopped at last in the bar of the Commercial Hotel a mile away, where he demanded hurriedly a glass of rum and milk.

Once a rat had devoured a corner tassel of one of her plush-covered chairs. Mrs. Fancy went upstairs and had a good cry over it. She dreamed of rats, large brown rats, for six months. At
last, in answer to her many prayers, her friendly chapel preacher, the gardener, saw the rat and chased it under some rubbish in Mrs. Fancy’s back yard. There he kicked it to death in the corner of the wall. After which gallant deed he was compelled to borrow some blacking to clean his blood-covered boot.

Mrs. Roude’s laughter worried Mrs. Fancy’s nerves almost as much as the rat had done. The gentleman, when a little time ago she had taken in the wine-glasses, had politely told her:

‘We shall want nothing more, thank you, to-night, Mrs. Fancy. We will be sure to
remember
to take great care of the sofa.’

Mrs. Fancy determined not to go to bed until her guests made the same move, and every creak and clatter, or movement of a chair, brought her back in haste to the parlour—to know if they wanted any hot water. Once, on being invited to come in, she was greeted by half an orange and a mocking shower of naughty laughter. As she fled to the kitchen she heard herself called:

‘Come back along, mother, and catch old uncle for a kiss!’

Such a merry young lady was Mrs. Roude!

Mrs. Fancy’s worried state of mind continued in the kitchen. ‘Her lodgers ought not to be,’ she thought, ‘like this.’ She could quite enjoy, she felt that very strongly, the harm, the ruin that came to young girls by being caught in her spider’s web, but there was no need for any harm
or any ruin to come to her, or, what was more to her than herself, her furniture. Suppose they spilt a glass of wine on one of the plush-covered chairs? Suppose her new green table-cloth—it was, when she went in last, nearly on the floor—got itself entangled in the feet of Mr. Roude? Or what if the grapes were trampled into the carpet? Mrs. Fancy saw her thirty shillings dwindle, die out, become extinct.

Were they, these two lodgers, playing
leapfrog
? Such was the clatter, Mrs. Fancy imagined they might be playing anything! Whatever game it was—could it be blind-man’s buff?—her furniture must of necessity suffer, because her furniture and her lodgers were shut up together. Some one, so the sound came to her, was running round the table, and some one else, rather more heavy, was stampeding after.

‘Would he pay for all the damage?’ Mrs. Fancy wondered. ‘Oh, why was not the good gentleman, the kind and generous Mr. Roude, a working man?’

It was all very well, for the thirty shillings and for the damage, that he was a gentleman, but in her heart Mrs. Fancy preferred to see wives and other young girls dealt with by the lower classes, who are not in the habit of running round the parlour table after them, but prefer to attend to this unvoiced side of life in a more popular manner. Mrs. Fancy regretted that the young person who was now making such a noise in her
parlour, could not be subjected to a little polite handling by a casual labourer after his return from the corner public.

‘What would happen,’ she thought, ‘if Mr. Roude, with his square-toed feet, kicked a chair? Where would her varnish be?’

Mrs. Fancy felt half inclined to return to the fray. Then the door of the sitting-room burst suddenly open, and the young lady, covered with her own hair—Mrs. Fancy thought at first that it was the best yellow rug that she kept under the table by the window—darted like a bird across the passage and leaped up three steps of the stair. Alas, for the stair carpet! Then Mrs. Fancy beheld the young lady take the rest at a run. Looking back, she called out, ‘You won’t catch me now!’ and ran into the lodgers’ bedroom and threw herself on the bed in the dark.

After her, on her trail, panted the gentleman. When he reached the room he lurched forward, clutched at the bed and the girl, missed them both, and fell heavily on the floor, where he lay still and silent.

Mrs. Fancy had never in her life felt a silence so full of meaning, as the silence that followed the fall. Nothing moved in the house, nothing moved anywhere. She could hardly at that moment believe that anything had been going on at all. Had she, after all, been dreaming?—she might have fallen asleep in her kitchen chair—or had her lodgers flown up the chimney like bats?

‘Could she reach her own front door?’ she wondered. The hour was not late. It was only ten o’clock. There must be people somewhere. All the town could not suddenly have become silent. That dreadful stillness could not be everywhere.

Mrs. Fancy moved. Never in all her life had she been so utterly terrified as she was at that moment by the sound of her own feet. Each step to the door was a frightful, living, ugly fear.

Once outside, she knocked at her nearest neighbours’. The first two did not reply, they were not in. At the third house there was laughter, the joyous laughter of an evening party. Mrs. Fancy knocked louder, and a rosy,
round-faced
woman, the mother, came to the door. Mrs. Fancy told her that ‘something,’ she did not know what it was, had happened to her new lodgers in their bedroom. ‘Could she come? Or if not, was there any one there who could come to help her?’

Her neighbour replied very readily, ‘that there was in her house, at that moment, a lady who was her daughter’s friend, and William, a sailor——’

William, hearing his own name, came to the door to see what he was wanted for. He was always being needed to mend something or other.

Terror communicates itself very speedily to human beings.

William was sure, by a sailor’s instinct, that
the lady who had joined his girl’s party was the proper person to take command. He asked her to come, because, being a sensible person, terror of the unseen was not the kind of fear to touch her.

The appearance of Miss Netley at that moment was, even to Mrs. Fancy’s mind, a relief: who but she could dare to face the silence that she left brooding in her house?

Even her Mill Street did not look the same. The houses seemed to bend towards one another, and the pavement narrowed and slipped as though it went downward. Mrs. Fancy felt the need of a few more lights. Worst of all, there was something queer about her own door, the step to it from the pavement looked red. She
explained
to Rose Netley that her gentleman and lady had gone upstairs to bed, and she had heard the gentleman fall. What had happened to the lady, she did not know, and she shook too much with the sound of the fall in her ears to go and see. ‘Would Miss Netley mind just going upstairs?’ The door was not locked. Mrs. Fancy did not wish to go in herself, she said, until they had discovered what it was.

Rose Netley found the lamp still burning in the kitchen. The sailor had matches in his pocket, and there was a candle upon Mrs. Fancy’s dresser. Rose led the way upstairs. Once in the room, it was quite clear to Rose what spectre had been there. Mrs. Fancy’s gentleman lay
upon his face, a part of the counterpane that he had clutched at when he fell still in his hand. On the floor about his head there was blood. He looked dead. Miss Netley, with the aid of William, turned him over in order to make sure, and found, as she had thought, that he was dead.

On the bed lay the form of a trembling girl, partly covered with a blanket that she had pulled over her eyes. The silence had been with the girl as well as with Mrs. Fancy. It had hung about her like a black cloud, closing in nearer and nearer. She felt its dense folds penetrate the thin blanket and touch her face.

The girl, driven nearly mad with terror, stopped her ears as well as she could with the blanket. Rose, seeing how matters were with her, tucked the blanket round her more securely, and, telling her quite cheerfully not to be
frightened
, asked the sailor to take her up as she was, and to carry her to the neighbour’s with orders that she was to be put to bed at once, ‘and tell them not to ask her any questions.’

Miss Netley stayed a few moments longer to see if anything could be done for the man. In the meanwhile, Mrs. Fancy, not caring much for standing before her own door, had gone off to the nearest police station. And within an hour Mrs. Fancy’s gentleman was conveyed, at her earnest request—‘it would ruin her rooms,’ she said, ‘for the body to stay with her’—to the town mortuary, where it was destined by a
capricious 
Providence that the gentleman should spend the night sleeping by the side of a drowned fisherman who had that afternoon been picked up at sea.

In the presence of the men with blue clothes, Mrs. Fancy opened the bag that the gentleman had brought with him. He had—she had managed to find that out—left it locked when he had gone to the station, but he had opened it upon his return to take out a very household-looking corkscrew, that he so thoughtfully must have brought from his home. Mrs. Fancy’s soul was shrewdly cunning, and the dead man having been taken away, her fears went with him. She began to see the matter in a new light. She began to reason that ‘a gentleman who died a little queerly and suddenly, clutching at a bed,’ might have relatives who would be ready to make it worth her while to tell one false story rather than two or three exaggerated true ones.

Mrs. Fancy was a widow, and all that the officers could get out of her were copious tears, and the much sobbed-out words, ‘Poor gentleman—dear gentleman—kind gentleman!’ and also a little help in opening the dear gentleman’s bag. Mrs. Fancy took out a clean shirt, quite a new one, and a suit of pyjamas and a toothbrush and a razor. At the bottom there was a pair of socks, not quite so new, they had been washed; they were marked, and marked carefully and clearly, upon a piece of tape just inside the leg, that was
sewed very daintily and with neat little stitches into the wool. Mrs. Fancy’s tears did allow her to read the name, and she handed the sock to the inspector, who read likewise the very plain words—‘Hector Turnbull.’

T
OWARDS the middle of the afternoon of the day after the death, a grey motor car splashed up to Mrs. Fancy’s door, after having first
remained
for quite an hour in another street in front of a doctor’s house. The car contained the Rev. John Turnbull and his brother, Dr. Turnbull.

They were shown into the lodgers’
sitting-room
, where they sat down upon two plush-covered chairs. Their business with Mrs. Fancy lasted quite a long time, though her clock still pointed to twelve. The sudden death of their respected father had not been a greater blow than these two brothers could decently bear. They took it very bravely.

When the telegram came from Henry, who had received one from the police, the Rev. John was sipping his coffee in the morning-room of his father-in-law’s mansion at Marlow. He was happily married. The edge of his plate was littered with certain contributions of ash from a very fragrant Turkish cigarette. At the same moment ‘the dear girl’ was pouring out cream for her ‘wee doggie,’ who lapped it up without taking the trouble to rise from his cushion.

The Rev. John daintily presented to the
atmosphere
, that was already pleasantly charged with the odour of a rich breakfast, a cloud of highly scented blue smoke, while he read the telegram. Just as he was reading it, the wee doggie, having
lapped the cream rather too greedily, became suddenly unwell, and a footman was called to attend. How could that possibly be the proper moment to trouble the dear girl about his father? or about any father, whether on earth or in heaven? She was quite enough occupied by the sick dog.

To Dr. Turnbull the telegram came when he was in his surgery attending to a woman with a swollen neck. The woman had just explained to him that in her cottage she had to put a plank across the kitchen because of the water, and the landlord’s man-of-all-work had told her ‘not to worry’ when she asked him to raise the floor. Dr. Turnbull told her the same.

‘Oh, don’t worry, Mrs. Scott, we’ll put you right! A teaspoonful of this mixture night and morning, Mrs. Scott; only, don’t leave it near the baby.’ He always said that. How could he know where the babies lived? ‘Yes—very well—Mrs. Scott—quite so—the weather looks like clearing. A week will put you right, Mrs. Scott. Good morning!’

And the doctor opened his telegram. Shortly after came another from the Rev. John, saying that he would come down, and that they could motor together to Portstown. The first telegram had set the doctor’s mind soaring like a hawk; after hovering for a moment over the Shelton vicarage, it swooped and fell upon the Will! How had his father arranged that little matter? he wondered.

Towards the close of the brothers’ visit to Mrs. Fancy, the Rev. John, in a fit of sudden charity—this kind of fit came to him as a rule when he was in the company of rather younger ladies—promised, the generous feeling so rose in his heart, to pay Mrs. Fancy’s rent for the current year. He must just then have felt very strongly about the hardships that poor landladies have to bear.

‘I could always see your dear father was a gentleman.’ And Mrs. Fancy put the whole of a musty handkerchief to her eyes.

At this inquest—the doctor said ‘there really need not have been one’—nothing disturbed the jury. It was a case, quite a natural one, of an old gentleman dying suddenly of heart failure. He might just as easily have died in his pulpit. What a kind old gentleman he must have been! He rescued a young girl—the doctor, in his evidence, said that she was too ill to attend—from two wicked soldiers. Mrs. Fancy’s friend, the gardener-preacher, had seen this at the station. He had taken her to his own lodgings in a quiet part of the town; he had even let her rest upon his own bed, and had gone upstairs himself, good kind clergyman, instead of sending the landlady, to see if she were rested, in order, no doubt, to provide a more proper accommodation for her for the night. Just as he had asked her how she was, he had fallen down stone-dead by the
bedside
. Really quite a sad story!

Upon reading the account of their vicar’s death in the weekly paper sent out from
Maidenbridge
on Thursdays, the Shelton people felt that their clergyman had really died very
comfortably
, doing, as he had always done there, quite the proper thing. Had they been told the truth, they would not have believed it. How could so mad a folly have seized so good a man? What could compel him, at his age, to dance round tables in the wake of a chit of a child only just seventeen? What could a gentleman with his money want with her, when he could at any moment go about with real ladies? If any item of the truth did tap at their minds, the villagers packed it off at once. They believed that a gentleman would treat that kind of matter, on the whole, just as they would, and certainly a rush upstairs was not the way a working man would do it, or the way a poor girl would expect him to do it.

The local paper sympathized very deeply with the bereaved family. ‘It was a sad ending,’ so the writer said, ‘to the pastor’s well-earned holiday in town, where he had gone to do a little shopping after his tiring Christmas duties.’

At the inquest Miss Netley told the plain truth, as shortly as possible, as to how she had found the body. She might have told a good deal more as to the condition in which she had found the hidden Annie. There was, she knew, one thing to be said for Mrs. Fancy’s story, and that
was, that it saved the girl’s reputation as well as the clergyman’s. Therefore Rose, who knew the world, allowed the matter to rest as it was, and quietly arranged that Annie should return to her home at Maidenbridge, the next day, under the care of Mr. Malden.

The body of Mr. Turnbull was removed from the honest though silent company of the drowned sailor, and was conveyed with all the proper and lawful ceremonies to Shelton vicarage. There the remains waited, caring nothing at all where they went next.

Mrs. Turnbull had, that very morning when the news came, been thinking that the right time was nearly come for making marmalade, an employment that, though it came second to the making of her jam, was none the less delightful to her. And how her husband used to eat it! The proper kind of orange, the Seville, was—so her grocer’s man who came for orders from Maidenbridge told her—on the way, and the stores would shortly be able to send her, he promised, at the lowest price, six dozen of the very best,—‘and, madam, would you care to look at this sample clothes-brush?’

It was a good chance, as he was away, for Edith to sweep out the corners of the master’s study and to clear away the old
Standard
newspapers. ‘They would be wanted,’ the mistress said, ‘to light the fires in the drawing-room.’ Mrs.
Turnbull
was very much upset—she had thought
about it all night—because her dear husband had gone off, in his hurry to catch the train, with a new unaired shirt in his bag, a shirt that she had never marked! What had made him, generally so fearful of colds, seize upon that particular garment? And why had he sent her away—she always liked to help—while he packed the bag himself? Suppose that anything should happen while he was away?

The train that bore the Rev. Hector Turnbull’s remains to Tadnoll, the local station, also conveyed Miss Annie Brent to Maidenbridge. The girl sat in the corner of the carriage, a limp creature, with all her colour gone. The kind of self that she had become in her month or two of dissipation was in hiding. Her late shock had, for the moment, taken it away.

Before the train had moved out of Portstown, Malden was deep in his paper, following what was to him the most interesting subject in the world, a chess problem. All at once he
remembered
that he had a girl in the train. All girls were to him children; he remembered that he ought to make this girl happy. Children are created to play, and, of course, must eat. He was sure of that. And they ought to be sent to bed at a proper time.

What a brute he was not to make this child in the train happy!

Annie was quite alarmed by his rush at the carriage door; the guard was waving his flag.
On the platform, Malden pounced upon an extremely small boy who sold chocolate, and he hurriedly purchased five shillings’ worth. Jumping in again, as the train moved, he poured the whole lot into her lap, much as the drover had poured gold into the lap of Alice.

This unexpected shower of sweets quite
restored
Annie’s inner girlhood, and a share of her old gaiety returned to her. Before they were half the distance to Maidenbridge, Malden was explaining to her how to play chess, and he very much commended the way she understood him. The other passenger in their carriage, a minister of religion, was quite sure that Malden was trying to seduce a young servant-girl he had caught on the way to her first place. As to Malden, he liked the young girl very much. She made, now and again, such quaint, shy remarks, remarks that came to him like a squirrel’s rustles in the boughs; though he felt that amusing her was rather like holding an October buttercup under a child’s chin.

She was, of course, a crude half-made creature, who always thought in the plain terms of the mob, the way, indeed, that most people think; but to be able to understand chess by means of half an envelope with screwed-up little bits of paper for pawns, showed a certain amount of adaptable genius. There was in her a chance for better things. Malden felt sure of that. If she could enjoy chess in the train with him, a big fellow,
old, and not exactly handsome, she had it in her also to enjoy a great many other harmless pleasures, and might in the end come to see that the sun gives wonderful colours to the earth, and that a child of the world can, if it likes, dance in the colours.

On their way through the streets of
Maidenbridge
, Malden told her stories about his own adventures. He could remember, he said, what he did when he was a little boy. Once on his birthday, he was just six, he fell into the river. He had seen, he remembered it quite well, a wonderful stone glittering and shining at the bottom. It was the most delightfully glowing stone, and leaning forward he had just comfortably rolled in.

When they arrived at Annie’s fried-fish shop, he had done things for Miss Annie. He had entirely changed the light of the garden of her thoughts, that mystic garden of light or darkness that surrounds every human creature. Malden had driven away from her garden that ugly thing with the tusks and the tail, and the merry sunlight of a girl’s forgetfulness blotted out the path that it had made through her daisies.

She ran into the house and took up again what she had not touched for two or three months, a silk blouse that she had begun to make for herself.