Chapter III Concerning Number Four and Who Lived in It
If I had had to give an account of Number Four even six months before this story opens I should have been forced to admit it was a blot on the Walk. The people who occupied it had left without paying their rent, which was in itself a thing likely to cast discredit on the whole Walk. But they did worse than that. Just before leaving, they managed, on one plausible pretext or another, to wheedle sums of varying amounts out of almost all their neighbours. Out of every one of them, in fact, except the Reverend Jacob Sternroyd, D.D., who lived all alone in the sixth and last house, and about whom I shall have more to say by-and-by. For weeks the Walk remained hopeful of seeing its money back. Then came doubt, and lastly, a period of very bad temper during which everybody told everybody else they had said so all along, and if people had only listened to them—! The owner of the house, a very fat brewer at Brentford, put in a dreadful old Irishwoman as caretaker, and she would sit on the front door-steps—the actual door-steps, in the open, where the whole Walk could not avoid seeing her—and smoke a filthy short black pipe: a sight terrible to behold.
When remonstrated with, she retorted volubly in incomprehensible Milesian. The Admiral himself had attacked her.
“Now, my good woman, we can’t have you smoking here.”
The old woman looked up at him with bleary eyes, and puffed in his face.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“What for should I not hear, darlint?”
“You are not to smoke here!”
“Who says so?”
“I say so. If you don’t go indoors, I ’ll come and take the pipe out of your mouth.”
“Will you so? You bring your ugly face inside that gate and see phwat I’ll do to ye!”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Sure an’ I do. Yer father sowld stinkin’ fish on Dublin quay when I was ridin’ in me carriage.”
“You foul-mouthed old woman—!”
“Don’t you ’ould woman’ me, neither. You go to hell and watch ould Nick stirrin’ up yer grandmother!”
No gentleman could hope to carry on a conversation on these lines with any success when all the windows of the Walk were open, and all the inhabitants listening behind the curtains. The Admiral went straight to the Brentford brewer, but the latter gave him no redress. He only asked whether the Admiral had taken the old lady’s advice.
She was not only in herself an intolerable nuisance, but she prevented desirable tenants from taking the house. Whenever any candidate appeared she had an excruciating toothache; or she was doubled up with rheumatism; or she shook the whole house with a ghastly churchyard cough. The sympathy of the enquirer forced the information from her that she had been sprightly and well, a picture of a woman, till she came to Pomander Walk. Mind you, she was n’t saying anything against the house. It was a good enough house; though, to be sure, the rats were something awful. Still, some people liked rats. In desperate cases she even went so far as to hint that the house was haunted. She was a foolish old woman, of course, but why did locked doors open of themselves? Doors she had locked with her own hands. They did say that the last tenant had hanged himself in the garret. And by that time the enquirer had given her half-a-crown, and had left her in the undisputed possession of her cutty-pipe on the doorstep.
This fertility of imagination led to her undoing, however. For upon hearing of it (from the Admiral, of course) the brewer sent his wife in the guise of an enquiring tenant, and subsequently turned the old woman out without any ceremony whatever.
But the Walk did not recover its self-respect for some time. The house was still undeniably empty. The windows got dirty; dead leaves covered the door-step; the paint peeled off the woodwork and the railings; some wretched boys threw a dead dog into the garden, where it lay hidden for days; and, besides, the old woman’s suggestion that the house was haunted, left its poison behind. Presently Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn’s nurse saw a face gibbering behind the window, and had hysterics; and next Miss Barbara Pennymint distinctly saw a hand beckoning to her from the same window and fled, shrieking, to her sister.
The Admiral pooh-poohed the whole thing and made elaborate arrangements to spend a night in the house with Jim. Jim expressed his delight at the prospect of such an adventure, and went about describing exactly what he would do to the ghost if he saw it; but he had very bad luck when the time came, with a sudden attack of sciatica which glued him to his bed. The curious thing was that however often the Admiral postponed the day for the undertaking, Jim’s sciatica inevitably returned when the day came. So time slipped away. The Admiral said he would explore the mystery alone, but it slipped his memory.
So the house remained tenantless, and when the Walk was painted according to the Admiral’s instructions, Number Four had to be passed over, and consequently looked more woe-begone than ever.
And the next thing the Walk knew was that it woke one morning to find strange men bringing loads of furniture, amongst which was a harp, a forte-piano, and a guitar-case, and that painters—not their own painters, but an entirely unknown lot—were at work scraping off the old paint.
The Admiral rushed out—I am shocked to say, in his slippers and shirt-sleeves—and was told that the house was let; let, without any sort of warning or notice; let, so to speak, over the heads of the Walk; over his own head. And the men could not tell him the name of the new tenant. All they knew was that it was a lady. A lady with a name they could n’t pronounce. A foreign name. Foreign? Foreign?—Yes; French, by the sound of it.
This was beyond anything the Admiral or the Walk had ever had to cope with. However, the Admiral mastered his indignation and contented himself with giving the painters strict and minute instructions as to the precise shade of green they were to use so as to make the house uniform with the rest.
He had to go to London next day to draw his pay. We know the inevitable consequences of that excursion. The following morning he woke at midday in a very bad humour. The first thing he saw when he threw open his window, was Sempronius digging up his sweet peas; and the next was Number Four painted a creamy white.
I draw a veil.
It was no use appealing to the brewer. He said he had nothing to do with it; and when it was pointed out to him that the chaste uniformity of the Walk was ruined, he impertinently suggested that the entire Walk might get itself painted all over again, and painted sky-blue.
So the Admiral took his time, determined to give this malapert and intrusive foreign woman—she had now become a woman—a severe lesson.
A few days later the house was taken possession of by an elderly female servant—a stout and florid Bretonne, who went about, as Mrs. Poskett said, looking a figure of fun in her national costume.
Then began such a scrubbing and brushing and washing at Number Four as the Walk had never seen. The bolder spirits—not the Admiral: he reserved himself for the enemy-in-chief—Mrs. Poskett, and Mrs. Brooke-Hoskyn’s nurse, made tentative approaches, but were repulsed with great slaughter: the Bretonne could not speak a word of English. When, however, she proceeded to tie a rope from the elm—the sacred Elm—-to the Gazebo, to hang rugs across it and beat them to the tune of “Malbroucq s’en va-t-en guerre” sung with immense gusto, Sir Peter was forced to attack her himself. He had picked up a smattering of French in the wars, and the Walk lined its window with eager faces to witness his victory.
Alas, the Bretonne now pretended not to understand the Admiral’s French, and replied to all his remonstrances, commands, and objurgations, with “Bien, mon vieux!” while she banged more lustily on the rugs and covered the now apoplectic Admiral with layers of dust.
The Admiral promised his subjects—Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn, I am sorry to say, indulged in a cynical smile—that the very first hour the Frenchwoman came into residence—the very first hour, mind you—he would teach her her place.
The next day the house was ready for her, and the Walk could but shudder as it looked at it: it had become so un-English. The steps were as white as snow; the garden was trim and neat; the quiet cream paint was offensively cheerful; the brass knocker was a poem; the windows gleamed, positively gleamed, in the sun, and behind them were coquettish lace curtains. The crowning offence was that every window-sill was loaded with growing flowers. Mr. Pringle said the house standing in the midst of its prim neighbours reminded him of a laughing young girl surrounded by her maiden aunts; and Miss Ruth Pennymint told him he ought to know better than to say such things in the presence of ladies.
The Admiral himself as this story proceeds, shall tell you in his own words of the startling effect produced by the arrival of the new tenants. Suffice it to say that it was totally unexpected, and that the Walk was forced to readjust its views in every particular. At the point of time we have now reached, Madame Lachesnais and her daughter, Marjolaine, were the most popular inhabitants of the Walk, and nobody had anything but good to say of them.
Wherefore, when, as recorded in the previous chapter, Mr. Pringle held up a warning hand and said “Madame!” all turned expectantly.
It was quite a little procession that now issued from Number Four. First came Nanette, the servant, spick and span in her Bretonne dress, with a cap of dazzling whiteness. On her arm was a great market-basket. She was followed by Madame herself, a tall and graceful person no longer in the first bloom of youth, but, in spite of the traces of sorrow on her face, still beautiful. She was dressed in some quiet, grey material, for she was still in half-mourning for her late husband; her delicate throat and hands were set off by exquisite old lace. She moved with a sort of floating grace, very charming to watch. There was distinction and well-bred self-possession in every line. Behind her followed her daughter, Marjolaine, a charming girl of nineteen. There is no necessity for more particular description. A charming girl of nineteen is the loveliest thing on earth, and more need not be said.
The Admiral and Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn leaped to their feet as Madame appeared. Both threw their chests out and assumed their finest company manner, to such an extent, indeed, that Mrs. Poskett could not repress a contemptuous sniff.
Madame came graciously towards the group. “Ah! Good afternoon,” she said, in a pleasant voice, with only the slightest trace of a French accent. “I am going marketing in Chiswick with Nanette. Nanette cannot speak a word of English, you know.” Then she turned to her daughter. “Marjolaine, you may take your book under the tree, if our friends will have you.” Marjolaine was talking to Mr. Basil Pringle. “It is nearly time for my singing-lesson, Maman.”
“Ah, yes. Mr. Basil, I fear you find her very backward.”
Basil could only murmur, “O no, Madame, I assure you—”
It was noticeable that everyone who spoke to Madame did so with a sense of subdued reverence.
Madame turned to Marjolaine. “Ask Miss Barbara to chaperone you, as I have to go out.”
“Bien, Maman.”
“You are to speak English, dear.”
“Bien, Maman—O! I mean yes, mother!”
Sir Peter and Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn both sidled up to Madame, while Mrs. Poskett stood utterly neglected and looked on with the air of an injured saint.
“May I not offer you my escort?” said both gentlemen in one breath.
“O no!” laughed Madame. “I have Nanette. Nothing can happen to me while I have Nanette.”
“As if anything ever could happen in Chiswick!” said Mrs. Poskett, a little spitefully.
Madame signalled to Nanette to lead the way, and followed her past the Eyesore and out of the Walk, convoyed by the gallant Admiral as far as the corner, where he stood looking after her an appreciable time.
Meanwhile Marjolaine had run up to the railings of Number Three where Miss Ruth Pennymint was sewing in the window.
“Miss Ruth,” she cried, “is Barbara busy?”
Miss Ruth looked up from her work with a smile as she saw the eager young face. “She’s closeted with Doctor Johnson.”
“Will you ask her to come out when she’s done?” and Marjolaine came back to the tree. Basil rose from his seat. “Pray don’t move,” said the young girl, prettily, “Barbara will be here in a moment. She is with Doctor Johnson.”
Basil’s face was very grave. It looked almost like the face of a man who finds himself in the presence of a great tragedy; or of one who knows he is fighting an insuperable obstacle. “Ah, yes,” he sighed, “Doctor Johnson. Surely that is very pathetic.” And he turned away and leant disconsolately against the railings, with his eyes fixed on the door of Number Three.
“Come and sit down, Missie, come and sit down,” cried the Admiral, heartily.
Marjolaine accepted his invitation. “I used to be so afraid of you, Sir Peter!”
“Gobblessmysoul! Why?”
“You were so angry with us for painting our house white!”
“Hum,” coughed the Admiral, looking guiltily at Mrs. Poskett and Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn. “Ah—hum!—the others were green, ye see. But it’s an admirable contrast.”
Mrs. Poskett sniffed. She had not forgotten the Admiral’s ignominious surrender.
Now Miss Ruth and Miss Barbara came out of their house, hand in hand, as usual. Miss Ruth was, as we are aware, considerably older than her sister, and still treated her like a pet child. Barbara disengaged herself as soon as she caught sight of Marjolaine, rushed at her with bird-like hops, and pecked a little kiss off each cheek as a bird pecks at a cherry.
“Oh, Marjolaine, dearest!” she cried with enthusiasm, “Doctor Johnson has been most extraordinarily eloquent!” The two girls walked away together with their arms gracefully entwined around each other’s waists. Ruth joined the others under the tree.
“Good afternoon,” she said, “Dear Barbara!—She has just had her hour with the parrot. Her memories of Lieutenant Charles are at their liveliest.”
Mr. Basil, who had never taken his eyes off Barbara, heaved a soul-rending sigh, and came up to Miss Ruth.
“Very unwholesome, I think,” said Mrs. Poskett, sharply. Miss Ruth explained to Basil: “Lieutenant Charles was in His Majesty’s Navy, you know, and dear Barbara was affianced to him.”
“So I have heard,” answered Basil, coldly. As a matter of fact, he had heard it on an average twice every day. Ruth went on relentlessly, “Unhappily he was abruptly removed from this earthly sphere.”
Bare politeness forced Basil to show some interest. After all, Ruth was Barbara’s sister. “I presume he fell in battle?”
“Say rather in single combat.”
The Admiral with difficulty suppressed a guffaw. He whispered to Basil with a hoarse chuckle, “As a matter of fact he was knocked on the head outside a gin-shop.”
“But,” the unconscious Ruth went on, “he had bestowed a token of his affection on dear Barbara, in the shape of the remarkable bird you may have seen.”
Basil had seen him often and had heard him constantly. For whenever the bird was left alone, he filled the air incessantly with ear-piercing shrieks.
“Doctor Johnson,” continued Ruth, “named after the great Lexicographer in consideration of his astonishing fluency of speech. Doctor Johnson is Barbara’s only consolation.”
Basil suppressed a groan. The obstacle! The obstacle!
“Yes, dear,” said Barbara, who had come up with Marjolaine. She spoke with pretty melancholy, but with a side-glance at Basil. “Yes, dear, he speaks with Charles’s voice, and says the very things Charles used to say.”
Basil moved away. This was almost more than he could bear.
“How lovely!” cried Marjolaine. “I wish I could hear him!”
“Ah, no!” Barbara’s chubby face fell into the nearest approach to solemnity she could manage. “Not even you may share that melancholy joy. The things he says are too sacred.”
Sir Peter had sidled up to Basil. “I tell you, sir, that bird’s language would silence Billingsgate. The atmosphere of that room must be solid, sir—solid.” Basil stared at him with amazed reproof, and the Admiral turned to Marjolaine. “Well, Missie, we all hope you ’ve grown to like the Walk?”
“I love it! And so does Maman.”
The Admiral grew enthusiastic. He turned towards the houses glowing in the late sun. “It is a sheltered haven. Look at it! A haven of content! What says the poet? ‘The world forgetting, by the world forgot.’”
All had turned with him. They were just an ordinary, every-day set of people. There was not a poet among them, if we except Basil, and yet the Walk, basking in the evening sun, touched some chord in each heart. The Admiral saw his flag drooping in the still air, and remembered his fighting days; Mrs. Poskett thought of Sempronius, and her tea-kettle simmering on the hob; Ruth was grateful for the shelter her little house had given her in her misfortune; Barbara thought of Doctor Johnson and—must I say it?—of Basil; Basil thought of Barbara; Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn thought of patient, unattractive Selina, and the four baby girls; Marjolaine, in her fresh girlhood, could only think of how pretty the flowers looked in the window.
Barbara exclaimed, “When the sunlight falls on it so, how lovely it is!”
Basil looked into her blue eyes, and murmured, “It reminds me of the music I am at work on.”
“What is that?” cried Marjolaine. “It sounds beautiful—through the wall.”
The musician’s enthusiasm was kindled; he grew eloquent. “It is by a new German composer: a man called Beethoven. My old violin-master, Kreutzer, sent it me.—Ah! These new Germans! They are so complicated; so difficult. I am old-fashioned, you know. I had the honour of playing under Mr. Haydn at the Salomon concerts. Yes! and in the very first performance of his immortal Oratorio, ‘The Creation,’ at Worcester. So perhaps I am prejudiced. Yet this new music is very wonderful; very heart-searching.” He stopped abruptly, realising he was talking to deaf ears. Sir Peter came to his rescue.
“I don’t know anything about your new-fangled fiddle-faddles; but, by Jehoshaphat, Pringle, play me a hornpipe, and I ’ll dance till your arms drop off!”
He hummed the tune, and with amazing agility sketched a few steps, while Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn put up his quizzing glass and eyed him with a superior smile. “Oh!” laughed Marjolaine, clapping her hands, “you must teach me!”
“That I will, Missie! and the sooner the better.”
Mrs. Poskett was furious. “No fool like an old fool,” she whispered in Ruth’s ear.
Barbara, who had been up to Mrs. Poskett’s gate to stroke Sempronius, came running down with a little cry of horror. She pointed to the frouzy figure of the Eyesore. “Look! The Eyesore ’s going to smoke!”
And, sure enough, after removing an indescribable handkerchief, a greasy newspaper, obviously containing his lunch, half an apple, a large piece of cheese, a huge pocket-knife, and a lump of coal he had picked up in the road, the Eyesore had dragged out a horrible little clay pipe and a dreadful little paper packet of tobacco. The Walk stood petrified. When the Eyesore smoked, everybody had to go indoors and shut their windows.
“His poisonous tobacco!” cried Ruth. “Can you not speak to him, Admiral?”
“I can, Madam, but he’ll answer back.”
“And then,” said Mrs. Poskett somewhat tartly, “of course you are helpless.”
“Not at all, ma’am. I hope I can swear with any man; but—the ladies!”
Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn had been observing the Eyesore. “Thank heaven,” he whispered, “his pipe won’t draw.”
For the Eyesore was trying to blow through the stem, was knocking his pipe on the palm of his hand, was endeavouring to run a straw through it: all without success. Finally, in an access of rage, he tossed it aside and sullenly resumed his fishing. A sigh of relief went up from the whole Walk. They were saved.
Now a quaint figure came slowly round the corner. “Ah!” cried Basil, “here is our good Doctor Sternroyd!”
“With his books, as usual,” added Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn. “What a brain!”
“Old dryasdust!” laughed Sir Peter. But pointing to the Doctor, Basil motioned them all to silence.
And, to be sure, the Doctor was worth looking at. He was dressed in the fashion of fifty years before. Indeed, I should doubt whether in all those fifty years he had had a new suit of clothes. On his head was a venerable hat of indefinite shape; under his left arm a great bundle of old books; under his right a venerable umbrella of generous proportions, which had once been green. Fortunately his coat had originally been snuff-coloured, so that the spilled snuff made no difference to it. His small-clothes were shabby; his lean shanks were encased in grey worsted stockings, and the great silver buckles on his shoes were tarnished.
At the present moment, however, it was not so much his appearance as his actions that arrested the Walk’s attention. He had come in dreamily as usual with his lack-lustre eyes seeing nothing in spite of their great silver-rimmed spectacles. Suddenly his attention was attracted by something lying at his feet. He stopped, picked it up laboriously, and examined it minutely, pushing his spectacles over his forehead for the purpose.
“Bless the man!” cried Mrs. Poskett. “He ’s picked up the Eyesore’s filthy pipe!”
And now he was exhibiting all the symptoms of frantic joy. Utterly unconscious of the people watching him, he indulged in delighted chuckles, and his withered old legs quite independently of their master’s volition executed a sort of grotesque dance. He looked very much like a crane that had caught a fish.
“But why the step-dance?” exclaimed Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn, with a laugh.
Sir Peter hailed him. “Doctor Sternroyd, ahoy!”
The Doctor looked from one to the other in genuine amazement. It was evident his mind had been wandering in some remote world.
“Dear me! Tut, tut!” he stammered. “I had not observed you!” Then, with a radiant face, “Ah, my friends, congratulate me!”
All gathered round him, and the Admiral asked, “What about, Doctor?”
“This,” said the reverend gentleman, holding up the trophy. “This. A beautiful specimen of an early Elizabethan tobacco-pipe!”
It was with the greatest difficulty the Admiral restrained a great burst of laughter from the onlookers. Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn got as far as “That, sir? Why, that’s—” when a tremendous dig from the Admiral’s elbow deprived him of his wind, and sent him backward clucking like an infuriated turkey-cock.
“I do not wonder at your surprise,” continued the antiquary. “Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, they are sometimes found in the alluvial deposit of the Thames; but even my friend, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose specialty they are, does not possess so perfect a specimen in his entire collection.”
Again the Admiral was obliged to exercise all his authority in order to suppress unseemly mirth or explanations. Doctor Sternroyd went on with the tone of regret assumed by a man of learning in the presence of an ignorant and unappreciative audience. “Ah, you don’t understand the value of these things. Out of this fragment it is possible to reconstruct an entire epoch. I see Sir Walter Raleigh’s fleet bringing home the fragrant weed from the distant plantations; I see him enjoying its vapours in his pleasaunce at Sherborne; I see Drake solacing himself with it on board the Golden Hind. Yes, yes, I shall read a paper on it.—Ah! if only my dear wife, my beloved Araminta, were here now!” With mingled melancholy and triumph he drifted across the lawn and into his house—the last house of the crescent.
“Amazing!” said Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn; “but why would n’t you let me tell him, Sir Peter?”
There was a wistful look on Sir Peter’s face as he replied. “Ah, Brooke! We all live on our illusions. The more we believe, the happier we are!”
This was beyond Brooke; but Miss Ruth understood and sighed her assent.