Chapter VI In which Pomander Walk is not Quite Itself
The Admiral was much troubled. A week had elapsed since Madame fainted, and although the mysterious process of unhooking her, together with a dash of water on her face, and the salts, had brought her to very rapidly, a cloud had seemed to hang over the Walk since that moment. It was certainly not itself, and it had grown less like itself as the days passed. Madame was apparently quite well, yet she stayed within doors, or, if she came out, her face was more than usually sad, and she walked with slow steps, like one who bears a heavy burden of sorrow. She was not seen in church on Sunday. Marjolaine was there, bright and happy. She had assured everybody there was nothing really serious the matter with her mother: only a headache. On Monday morning Marjolaine was still her usual merry self, but as the morning wore into the afternoon and the afternoon into the evening she grew restless. The Admiral noticed that she kept on going to the river-bank and looking up and down stream as if she were expecting someone. On Tuesday she was out very early, still apparently watching. On Wednesday she grew silent, and refused to have her usual singing-lesson on the plea that she was not feeling very well. On Thursday she turned unnaturally gay, but there was a hard note in her laughter, and Sir Peter had caught her sobbing in the Gazebo. Fortunately she had not noticed him, and he was able to retire without disturbing her. But he himself was greatly disturbed. The more so as he had seen that Madame was watching her daughter intently, and that every change in Marjolaine was reflected on the elder lady’s face.
Friday found Marjolaine pale and dejected; and here was midday on Saturday, and she had not yet appeared!
Could she be sickening for a serious illness? Sir Peter was nervous and anxious. He was also put out by the fact that although Jack Sayle had promised as he hurriedly rowed away, that he would come to see him on the Monday, the whole week had passed without a sign of the young lieutenant, and without any word of explanation.
But the entire Walk was nervous and anxious. It had grown so accustomed to Marjolaine’s songs and merry laughter, that as she grew silent and grave, the Walk grew silent and grave with her. Mrs. Poskett’s temper underwent a change for the worse, and she and Ruth Pennymint very nearly had words over a milk-can which the dairy-man had carelessly hung on the wrong railing. Ruth’s ill-humour was aggravated by the behaviour of Barbara and Basil. They went about sighing and turning up the whites of their eyes; Barbara shut herself up two and three hours every day with the parrot, and Basil ground at the slow movement of the Kreutzer Sonata, repeating one particularly heart-rending passage so persistently that Ruth wanted to scream.
But the man who behaved most strangely of all was Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn. That magnificent creature showed all the symptoms of a guilty conscience. It is true he strutted about the Walk, dressed as faultlessly as ever, swung his tassled cane with much of his old elegance, and took snuff with all the airy grace imaginable. And yet—and yet—! Somehow, his clothes seemed to hang loosely on him. Somehow, his hat, though poised at a rakish angle, no longer conveyed the old devil-may-care impression. His face no longer beamed with unassailable self-satisfaction. There was a furtive look in his eyes, as though he were constantly on the watch. It is a low comparison to apply, but if you have ever seen a dog who knows he has just stolen a piece of meat, you have seen Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn. Once, when the Admiral, who was stubbornly resisting the universal depression, came up behind him unobserved and suddenly slapped him on the back, he screamed—he positively screamed. “Thought the Bow-street runners was after you?” roared the Admiral heartily. But the tone of fury with which he replied “Certainly not, sir! How dare you?” was so sincere that Sir Peter did not pursue the joke. Evidently he had indeed thought the runners were after him.
The Walk was like a drooping flower, and even the Eyesore felt the depressing influence; he fished less hopefully than ever, and it was noticed that he interrupted his fishing more frequently for excursions outside the bounds of Pomander Walk: excursions from which he returned wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and returned each time perhaps a trifle less steadily.
Now, all these good people had lost their usual good spirits and their cheery outlook on life merely because one little girl had left off laughing; and she had left off laughing because one very young man had not kept his word.
The servants of the Walk were very busy this Saturday morning. Jane, Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn’s nurse, was explaining to Abigail, Mrs. Poskett’s little maid, that nothing should persuade her to continue wearing the Charity-School costume after she had risen to the dignity of domestic service. Jim was feverishly polishing the Admiral’s little brass cannon. That brass cannon was the apple of the Admiral’s remaining eye; and at the same time the plague of his life. On every state occasion, such as the King’s birthday, or the anniversary of the Battle of Copenhagen, he would, to the great terror of the Walk, have it out, plant it pointing truculently to the opposite side of the river and, standing well away from it, apply a match. This was always an agonised moment of suspense for the Walk. But invariably the gun refused to go off. The Admiral’s expletives, however, supplied an efficient substitute. I am sorry to say the failure to explode was always due to an act of treachery on Jim’s part. The Walk subscribed five shillings towards that ancient mariner’s liquid refreshment, and the ancient mariner withdrew the charge in the dead of night. To-day he was polishing the gun well in view of all the houses. The King’s birthday was approaching, and the Walk needed a gentle reminder that unless it wished to be stunned and to have all its windows broken, now was the time to start the usual collection.
Nanette came out of Number Four, carrying a rug and a bamboo cane, evidently bent on beating the former on the lawn. Jane drew Jim’s attention to her. Then began a battle of tongues. Jim tried to explain that this was not allowed. If she wanted to beat the rug, she must do so in the back garden. Words, none of which either could understand, grew high; Abigail and Jane joined in, and the place became a veritable Babel of screaming voices and of wildly waving arms.
Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn opened his window violently. “What’s all this?” he cried; and he was such an amazing apparition that the voices sank to sudden silence and the servants rushed, helter-skelter, into their respective houses.
Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn was finishing his toilet. He was brushing his hair. It stood out on each side of his head like a sort of double mane, and his face looked exactly like the representations of a flaming sun on the cover of an almanac. He was carrying on a conversation with Selina, and both he and his wife were evidently in a bad humour.
“But, my own Selina,” said he, “what was I to do? Be reasonable. I only wrote and told his lordship the boy was carrying on a clandestine love-affair.—No, of course I did n’t sign the letter.—None of my business?—Now, Selina, if I had n’t wrote he ’d have come again, and all would have been disclosed. We should have been obleeged to leave the Walk.—Drat the Walk?—Oh! fie! That is not how my ring-dove customarily coos.—What? soft words butter no parsnips?—Selina, Selina—! Does my Selina think she is in her kitchen?—Yes; I know I ’ve made Miss Marjory very unhappy; but we must make other people unhappy, if we ’re to be happy ourselves. I ’m sorry for her, very sorry. She’s a sweet creature.” There was a sound of a broken tea-cup. “There you go again!—You scold me for making her unhappy, and you scold me for being sorry. There ’s no pleasing you anyhow!”
In his perplexity he had brushed his hair over the top of his head, and now he looked like an angry cockatoo.
Marjolaine came slowly and dejectedly out of her house. She heard Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn’s voice and glanced up at him, but even his wild and wonderful appearance failed to draw a smile from her. Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn could not retire, much as he would have liked to. He waved a conciliatory hair-brush at her, and cried with assumed cheerfulness, “Ah, Miss Marjory—! How do you do?” then in response to some remark from his wife, he turned and whispered peevishly, “I must speak to her; it’s only polite. Don’t snivel.” He addressed Marjolaine again, deprecatorily, “You are looking a little pale.”
Marjolaine drew herself up. It was intolerable that anybody should see she was in trouble.
“I never felt better in my life,” she said defiantly.
“But more like the lily than the rose?” exclaimed Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn with a fine touch of lyricism; and then to Selina, “No; I am not talking nonsense! It was a quotation.”
“How is Mrs. Brooke-Hoskyn this morning?” asked Marjolaine.
“In the highest spirits!” cried Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn. “My dear Selina,” he explained, turning towards the room, “Miss Marjory is kind enough to ask after your health, and I am telling her you are in the highest spirits. Do—not—snivel—she ’ll hear you!” To Marjolaine, with a ghastly smile, “Her gaiety is infectious; positively infectious!” Some hard object, thrown with unerring aim, caught him in the small of the back. “Oh, Lord!” he cried. “Excuse me, Miss Marjory; Selina has just remembered a joke she wishes to tell me. Thus the hours pass in innocent mirth and badinage. Excuse me!” He turned away. “You really are—!” he cried, almost viciously; and slammed the window, and disappeared.
But Marjolaine never smiled. She moved as one who had no particular object in life. She drifted instinctively towards the river-bank although she knew that strain her eyes as she might the little boat she had looked for all the week was now less likely than ever to appear. At one moment she seemed almost inclined to speak to the Eyesore; to ask him whether he had seen what she had so long been vainly looking for. But the Eyesore was at that instant impaling a worm, and was altogether too revolting. She stood a moment looking up and down the stream, and then turned away with a great sigh.
Mrs. Poskett’s great yellow cat, Sempronius, was curled up in the sun just behind the Gazebo. Marjolaine looked at him. She and he were fast friends, and in happier times she would have had a friendly word for him and an affectionate caress. To-day, even that was too much of an effort. Fortunately Sempronius was asleep and did not notice her inattention.
Sir Peter Antrobus opened his upstair window and hung the osier cage with the thrush in it on its nail. He caught sight of the disconsolate little figure. “Missie, ahoy!” he roared, as though he were hailing a friendly craft in the offing. Marjolaine started.
“Oh, Sir Peter! You made me jump!”
“Sent a shot across your bows—what?” roared the Admiral.
“How’s the thrush?” asked Marjolaine with an interest she did not feel.
“Peaky. Peaky. That confounded cat next door’s been watching him. Seen him about anywhere?”
Marjolaine pointed to where Sempronius was lying wrapped in innocent slumber. “He’s quite safe,” she said. “There.”
But the Eyesore was between him and Sir Peter, and the latter had to twist himself into what was for so portly a gentleman a very unnatural position in order to see him. “Eh? Where?”
“There,” she answered, “there, behind the—” she was just going to say “Eyesore,” but stopped herself in time. “Behind the Gazebo.”
“Oh, there! Well, if he moves I’ll kill him!”
Marjolaine wondered. Could Sir Peter tell her what she so much wanted to know? Could he, at least, be brought to talk about what her heart was full of?
“Sir Peter,” she said, with as much of her old cheerfulness as she could summon, and with that pretty way of hers which no one could resist, “Are you very busy? Could you spare time for a little chat?”
“With you?” cried the Admiral, gallantly. “Hours!” He vanished from the window and was heard tumbling down his stairs two at a time. I believe if he had been only a few years younger he would have slid down the balustrade. Jim told Jane later in the day he had never seen anything like it.
Marjolaine waited for him under the elm, and pondered how she was to lead the conversation round to what she wanted to hear.
The Admiral burst out of his house. For once he took no notice of the Eyesore. The cat, however, did arrest his attention. Sempronius, scenting an enemy, was blinking at him out of one eye. Sempronius’ attitude towards the Admiral was one of armed neutrality. He knew Sir Peter bore him no good-will, but he also knew Sir Peter dare not touch him. Wherefore, although he kept a wary look-out, even the Admiral’s threatening gesture was not enough to make him stir from his sunny corner.
Sir Peter came to Marjolaine.
“He’s sitting there, watching the Eyesore like a tiger. Shows cats have no sense. ’Pears to think the Eyesore’s going to catch a fish! Ha! Never caught a fish in his born days!” He took both Marjolaine’s hands in his. “Well, Missie; what can I do for you?”
“Talk to me,” said Marjolaine.
Sir Peter was flattered and delighted. Their little Missie was coming to life again. “Ah!—tell ye what,” he said, swinging her hands, “If we had that fiddler here, we might practise the hornpipe!” He whistled gaily and tried to force her into the step.
“No, no!” she cried, breaking away from him; and then, more gently, “No: not to-day!”
The Admiral looked at her anxiously out of his one eye. “Oh?” said he, sympathetically, “In the doldrums?”
“Sir Peter,” she cried, impulsively, “was you ever broken-hearted?”
“Lord bless your pretty eyes, yes! Every time I left port.”
“Ah! but did the world seem like an empty husk? and did you want to sit down and cry your eyes out?”
This was much worse than the Admiral had anticipated. He must try to make her laugh.
“Well, ye see, I could only have cried one out, was it ever-so!”
“Then what did you do? How did you cure yourself?”
“Why, with a jorum of rum, to be sure!”
Marjolaine was disappointed. “Oh!—I can’t do that!”
Sir Peter came closer. “What? Are you broken-hearted?”
Good heavens! What had she been saying? Had she given away her precious secret?
“Certainly not!” she answered, with flaming cheeks. “Of course not. It’s nothing. Only somebody—somebody has broken their word.”
“Look-a-that, now!” cried the Admiral, puzzled. “But I’ll cure you! I’ll tell you a story. Something funny. How I lost my eye—what?” He drew her down beside him on the seat under the elm. “Ye see, it was on board o’ the Termagant—”
“When you was with Nelson?” asked Marjolaine.
“Ay. Battle o’ Copenhagen; year Eighteen-one.”
Here was a possible opening. At any rate Marjolaine would try.
“I suppose you had many officers under you?” she insinuated.
“Hundreds!” cried Sir Peter, enthusiastically; and then, feeling he had conveyed an exaggerated impression, “well—when I say hundreds—!” his memory awoke. “Ah! I was somebody, then!—But this infernal government—!”
Marjolaine laid her hand soothingly on his arm. “I suppose some of them were quite young?” she said, with splendidly assumed indifference. Every woman is a born actress.
“Middies?” cried the Admiral, with magnificent contempt. “Lord love ye, I took no notice o’ them! Passel o’ powder-monkeys!” Then he added with a touch of tender recollection, “Not but what Jack Sayle—”
“Jack what?” said Marjolaine quickly, as if she had not heard.
“Sayle. Jack Sayle. You know. Young feller I presented to your lady-mother a week ago. Time she swooned—”
“Oh, yes.”
“Gobblessmysoul! I was startled! I thought—”
The Admiral must not be allowed to wander from the only topic that mattered. Marjolaine interrupted him. “Was he on your ship?”
“What, Jack Sayle? Ay, was he. And a fine young feller, too. Of course you was much too agitated to notice him last Saturday. Gad! I wonder he has n’t been to see me all the week. Promised he would. Said he ’d come last Monday.”
“Did he?” cried Marjory. So he had broken his word in two places!
“He did. There! He’s only on leave, and he has heavy social duties. Only son of Lord Otford, y’ know.”
“Lord Otford!” Marjolaine repeated, amazed. The name and the title somehow impressed her with a sense of vague fear.
“Ay, ay,” the unconscious Admiral proceeded garrulously. “My old friend. Otford’s selfish about him. Ye see, the boy ’ll come into a great estate. Half a county. And the old man’s anxious about his marriage.”
“Whose marriage?” asked Marjory, almost voicelessly.
“Why, Jack’s, to be sure!—Lord!—they marry ’em now before they ’re out of their swaddling clothes. Otford’s in a hurry to secure the succession—” He stopped abruptly. This was really not a subject to discuss with a young girl. “Hum!—what I was about to say—er—the Honourable Caroline Thring—!”
“Caroline Thring”—Marjolaine repeated the name to herself. It was a name to remember.
“Ay—daughter and sole heiress of Lord Wendover. Not my sort. Goes about doing good—like the party last Saturday. But the two estates ’ll cover the county. It’s an undoubted match—”
Marjolaine had heard all she wanted—and more. She felt she would break down if the Admiral went on. She looked all around the Walk for help; for some excuse to break off the conversation. There was only Sempronius. “I think—” she just gave herself time to make up her mind as to what she could think—“I think I saw Sempronius stirring!”
Sir Peter jumped up. “Damn that cat!” he cried—“Beg pardon!—I’ll—” But the golden-haired Sempronius was sound asleep with his bushy tail over his nose.
Whether the Eyesore was shocked by the Admiral’s bad language—which seems unlikely—or whether he was moved by his usual thirst, he dropped his fishing-rod, and vanished round the corner.
The Admiral hurried back.
“No. He ’s quiet enough.” He saw Marjolaine’s sad face and added, “Gobblessmysoul! Here I ’ve been boring you about a young feller you don’t know—” To his amazement Marjolaine turned her face away abruptly. The Admiral stopped short. Why did she turn away? Was it possible that—? How long had Jack been in the Walk when he met him a week ago? “Do you know him?” said he. Marjolaine was silent. Sir Peter gave a low whistle. He took her gently by the shoulder and turned her towards him. “Here, I say, young woman—You just look me in the eye.” He pointed to his good one. “This eye.” Marjolaine stood before him in confusion. It made her angry to feel confused. Why should she feel confused? “I—I have seen him once,” she answered bravely.
“Have you, begad!—So that’s what he was cruising about here for, was it?—But I’ll teach him!”
Marjolaine was very angry indeed. “Sir Peter!” she flashed at him, “If you breathe it, I ’ll never speak to you again!”
“D’ ye think I ’ll have him coming here—?”
“But he’s not coming here!” cried Marjolaine; and with a meaning of her own: “Oh, don’t you see he’s not coming?—Swear you won’t breathe a word to a living soul! Swear! Swear!”
“Damme!” cried the Admiral. “I must think that over. And as for you,” he added, with humorous sternness, “you come and sit under the tree and I ’ll talk to you like a Dutch uncle.”
Marjolaine saw Mrs. Poskett at her window. It would not do for Sir Peter to talk to her like an uncle—Dutch or otherwise. “Sir Peter!” she cried, “Sempronius is going to jump!”
Sir Peter rushed to the cat again, and again found him sound asleep. He turned furiously towards Marjolaine, but Mrs. Poskett intercepted him. “Good morning, Sir Peter!”
Sir Peter looked up, where the widow was shaking the ribbons of her cap at him. “Morning, ma’am,” he said, sulkily. “Your cat—”
“Hush!” interrupted Mrs. Poskett, craning forward to see her pet. “Dear Sempronius!—Don’t disturb him! He’s so happy!”
“But—!”
“I ’m sure it’s going to rain,” the widow explained. “He always sits there when he feels rain coming; because the fish rise, and he loves watching them.”
“Confounded nonsense,” growled Sir Peter.
Mrs. Poskett closed her window, and Sir Peter was on the point of returning to Marjolaine and having it out with her, when Madame Lachesnais came out of her house. Of course that made all conversation with the girl impossible, and as he did not feel he could meet the mother, knowing what he now knew, there was nothing left for him but to salute her and beat a hasty retreat into his own house and think things over.