IV
Nellie led the way to the chamber known as "Maisie's room," where theyoungest of the Machins was wont to sleep in charge of the nurse who,under the supervision of the mother of all three, had dominion overRobert, Ralph and their little sister.
The first thing that Edward Henry noticed was the screen which shutoff one of the beds. The unfurling of the four-fold screen was alwaysa sure sign that Nellie was taking an infantile illness seriously. Itwas an indication to Edward Henry of the importance of the dog-bite inNellie's esteem.
When all the chicks of the brood happened to be simultaneously soundthe screen reposed, inconspicuous, at an angle against a wall behindthe door; but when pestilence was abroad, the screen travelled fromone room to another in the wake of it, and, spreading wide, took partin the battle of life and death.
In an angle of the screen, on the side of it away from the bed andnear the fire (in times of stress Nellie would not rely on radiators)sat old Mrs.. Machin, knitting. She was a thin, bony woman ofsixty-nine years, and as hard and imperishable as teak. So far as herson knew she had only had two illnesses in her life. The first was anattack of influenza, and the second was an attack of acute rheumatism,which had incapacitated her for several weeks.
Edward Henry and Nellie had taken advantage of her helplessness, then,to force her to give up her barbaric cottage in Brougham Street andshare permanently the splendid comfort of their home. She existedin their home like a philosophic prisoner-of-war at the court ofconquerors, behaving faultlessly, behaving magnanimously in themelancholy grandeur of her fall, but never renouncing her soul'ssecret independence, nor permitting herself to forget that she was onforeign ground.
When Edward Henry looked at those yellow and seasoned fingers, whichby hard manual labour had kept herself and him in the young days ofhis humble obscurity, and which during sixty years had not been idlefor more than six weeks in all, he grew almost apologetic for hiswealth.
They reminded him of the day when his total resources were fivepounds--won in a wager, and of the day when he drove proudly aboutbehind a mule collecting other people's rents, and of the glitteringdays when he burst in on her from Llandudno with over a thousandgold sovereigns in a hat-box--product of his first great picturesquecoup--imagining himself to be an English Jay Gould.
She had not blenched, even then. She had not blenched since. And shenever would blench. In spite of his gorgeous position and his uniquereputation, in spite of her well-concealed but notorious pride inhim, he still went in fear of that ageless woman, whose undaunted eyealways told him that he was still the lad Denry, and her inferior inmoral force. The curve of her thin lips seemed ever to be warning himthat with her pretensions were quite useless, and that she saw throughhim and through him to the innermost grottoes of his poor humandepravity.
He caught her eye guiltily.
"Behold the Alderman!" she murmured with grimness.
That was all. But the three words took thirty years off his back,snatched the half-crown cigar out of his hand and reduced him again tothe raw, hungry boy of Brougham Street. And he knew that he had sinnedgravely in not coming upstairs very much earlier.
"Is that you, father?" called the high voice of Robert from the backof the screen.
He had to admit to his son that it was he.
The infant lay on his back in Maisie's bed, while his mother satlightly on the edge of nurse's bed near by.
"Well, you're a nice chap!" said Edward Henry, avoiding Nellie'sglance, but trying to face his son as one innocent man may faceanother--and not perfectly succeeding. He never could feel like a realfather, somehow.
"My temperature's above normal," announced Robert, proudly, and thenadded with regret, "but not much!"
There was the clinical thermometer--instrument which Edward Henrydespised and detested as being an inciter of illnesses--in a glass ofwater on the table between the two beds.
"Father!" Robert began again.
"Well, Robert?" said Edward Henry, cheerfully. He was glad that thechild was in one of his rare loquacious moods, because the chatter notonly proved that the dog had done no serious damage--it also eased thesilent strain between himself and Nellie.
"Why did you play the Funeral March, father?" asked Robert, and thequestion fell into the tranquillity of the room rather like a bombthat had not quite decided whether or not to burst.
For the second time that evening Edward Henry was dashed.
"Have you been meddling with my music rolls?"
"No, father. I only read the labels."
This child simply read everything.
"How did you know I was playing a funeral march?" Edward Henrydemanded.
"Oh, _I_ didn't tell him!" Nellie put in, excusing herself beforeshe was accused. She smiled benignly, as an angel-woman, capable offorgiving all. But there were moments when Edward Henry hated moralsuperiority and Christian meekness in a wife. Moreover, Nelliesomewhat spoiled her own effect by adding, with an artificialcontinuation of the smile, "You needn't look at _me_!"
Edward Henry considered the remark otiose. Though he had indeedventured to look at her, he had not looked at her in the manner whichshe implied.
"It made a noise like funerals and things," Robert explained.
"Well, it seems to me _you've_ been playing a funeral march," saidEdward Henry to the child.
He thought this rather funny, rather worthy of himself, but the childanswered with ruthless gravity and a touch of disdain (for he was adisdainful child, without bowels):
"I don't know what you mean, father." The curve of his lips (he hadhis grandmother's lips) appeared to say: "I wish you wouldn't try tobe silly, father." However, youth forgets very quickly, and the nextinstant Robert was beginning once more, "Father!"
"Well, Robert?"
By mutual agreement of the parents the child was never addressedas "Bob" or "Bobby," or by any other diminutive. In their practicalopinion a child's name was his name, and ought not to be mauled ordismembered on the pretext of fondness. Similarly, the child had notbeen baptized after his father, or after any male member of either theMachin or the Cotterill family. Why should family names be perpetuatedmerely because they were family names? A natural human reaction, this,against the excessive sentimentalism of the Victorian era!
"What does 'stamped out' mean?" Robert inquired.
Now Robert, among other activities, busied himself in the collectionof postage stamps, and in consequence his father's mind, under theimpulse of the question, ran immediately to postage stamps.
"Stamped out?" said Edward Henry, with the air of omniscience thata father is bound to assume. "Postage stamps are stamped out--by amachine--you see."
Robert's scorn of this explanation was manifest.
"Well," Edward Henry, piqued, made another attempt, "you stamp a fireout with your feet." And he stamped illustratively on the floor. Afterall, the child was only eight.
"I knew all that before," said Robert, coldly. "You don't understand."
"What makes you ask, dear? Let us show father your leg." Nellie'svoice was soothing.
"Yes," Robert murmured, staring reflectively at the ceiling. "That'sit. It says in the _Encyclopaedia_ that hydrophobia is stamped out inthis country--by Mr.. Long's muzzling order. Who is Mr.. Long?"
A second bomb had fallen on exactly the same spot as the first, andthe two exploded simultaneously. And the explosion was none theless terrible because it was silent and invisible. The tidy domesticchamber was strewn in a moment with an awful mass of woundedsusceptibilities. Beyond the screen the _nick-nick_ of grandmother'ssteel needles stopped and started again. It was characteristic of hertemperament that she should recover before the younger generationscould recover. Edward Henry, as befitted his sex, regained his nerve alittle earlier than Nellie.
"I told you never to touch my _Encyclopaedia_," said he, sternly.Robert had twice been caught on his stomach on the floor with a vastvolume open under his chin, and his studies had been traced by vilethumb-marks.
&nbs
p; "I know," said Robert.
Whenever anybody gave that child a piece of unsolicited information healmost invariably replied, "I know."
"But hydrophobia!" cried Nellie. "How did you know about hydrophobia?"
"We had it in spellings last week," Robert explained.
"The deuce you did!" muttered Edward Henry.
The one bright facet of the many-sided and gloomy crisis was the veryobvious truth that Robert was the most extraordinary child that everlived.
"But when on earth did you get at the _Encyclopaedia_, Robert?" hismother exclaimed, completely at a loss.
"It was before you came in from Hillport," the wondrous infantanswered. "After my leg had stopped hurting me a bit."
"But when I came in nurse said it had only just happened!"
"Shows how much _she_ knew!" said Robert, with contempt.
"Does your leg hurt you now?" Edward Henry inquired.
"A bit. That's why I can't go to sleep, of course."
"Well, let's have a look at it." Edward Henry attempted jollity.
"Mother's wrapped it all up in boracic wool."
The bed-clothes were drawn down and the leg gradually revealed. Andthe sight of the little soft leg, so fragile and defenceless, reallydid touch Edward Henry. It made him feel more like an authentic fatherthan he had felt for a long time. And the sight of the red wound hurthim. Still, it was a beautifully clean wound, and it was not a largewound.
"It's a clean wound," he observed judiciously. In spite of himself hecould not keep a certain flippant harsh quality out of his tone.
"Well, I've naturally washed it with carbolic," Nellie returnedsharply.
He illogically resented this sharpness.
"Of course he was bitten through his stocking?"
"Of course," said Nellie, re-enveloping the wound hastily, as thoughEdward Henry was not worthy to regard it.
"Well, then, by the time they got through the stocking the animal'steeth couldn't be dirty. Everyone knows that."
Nellie shut her lips.
"Were you teasing Carlo?" Edward Henry demanded curtly of his son.
"I don't know."
Whenever anybody asked that child for a piece of information he almostinvariably replied, "I don't know."
"How--you don't know? You must know whether you were teasing the dogor not!" Edward Henry was nettled.
The renewed spectacle of his own wound had predisposed Robert to feela great and tearful sympathy for himself. His mouth now began to takestrange shapes and to increase magically in area, and beads appearedin the corners of his large eyes.
"I--I was only measuring his tail by his hind leg," he blubbered andthen sobbed.
Edward Henry did his best to save his dignity.
"Come, come!" he reasoned, less menacingly. "Boys who can read_Encyclopaedias_ mustn't be cry-babies. You'd no business measuringCarlo's tail by his hind leg. You ought to remember that that dog'solder than you." And this remark, too, he thought rather funny, butapparently he was alone in his opinion.
Then he felt something against his calf. And it was Carlo's nose.Carlo was a large, very shaggy and unkempt Northern terrier, but owingto vagueness of his principal points, due doubtless to a vaguenessin his immediate ancestry, it was impossible to decide whether he hadcome from the north or the south side of the Tweed. This ageing friendof Edward Henry's, surmising that something unusual was afoot in hishouse, and having entirely forgotten the trifling episode of the bite,had unobtrusively come to make inquiries.
"Poor old boy!" said Edward Henry, stooping to pat the dog. "Did theytry to measure his tail with his hind leg?"
The gesture was partly instinctive, for he loved Carlo; but it alsohad its origin in sheer nervousness, in sheer ignorance of what wasthe best thing to do. However, he was at once aware that he had donethe worst thing. Had not Nellie announced that the dog must be gotrid of? And here he was fondly caressing the bloodthirsty dog! Witha hysterical movement of the lower part of her leg Nellie pushedviolently against the dog--she did not kick, but she nearlykicked--and Carlo, faintly howling a protest, fled.
Edward Henry was hurt. He escaped from between the beds and from thatclose, enervating domestic atmosphere where he was misunderstood bywomen and disdained by infants. He wanted fresh air; he wanted bars,whiskies, billiard-rooms and the society of masculine men-about-town.The whole of his own world was against him.
As he passed by his knitting mother she ignored him and moved not. Shehad a great gift of holding aloof from conjugal complications.
On the landing he decided that he would go out at once into the majorworld. Half-way down the stairs he saw his overcoat on the hall-standbeckoning to him and offering release.
Then he heard the bedroom door and his wife's footsteps.
"Edward Henry!"
"Well?"
He stopped and looked up inimically at her face, which overhung thebanisters. It was the face of a woman outraged in her most profoundfeelings, but amazingly determined to be sweet.
"What do you think of it?"
"What do I think of what? The wound?"
"Yes."
"Why, it's simply nothing. Nothing at all. You know how that kidalways heals up quick. You won't be able to find the wound in a day ortwo."
"Don't you think it ought to be cauterized at once?"
He moved on downwards.
"No, I don't. I've been bitten three times in my life by dogs. And Iwas never cauterized."
"Well, I _do_ think it ought to be cauterized." She raised her voiceslightly as he retreated from her. "And I shall be glad if you'll callin at Dr. Stirling's and ask him to come round."
He made no reply, but put on his overcoat and his hat and took hisstick. Glancing up the stairs he saw Nellie was now standing at thehead of them, under the electric light there, and watching him. Heknew that she thought he was cravenly obeying her command. She couldhave no idea that before she spoke to him he had already decided toput on his overcoat and hat and take his stick and go forth into themajor world. However, that was no affair of his.
He hesitated a second. Then the nurse appeared out of the kitchen,with a squalling Maisie in her arms, and ran upstairs. Why Maisie wassqualling, and why she should have been in the kitchen at such an hourinstead of in bed, he could not guess. But he could guess that if heremained one second longer in that exasperating minor world he wouldbegin to smash furniture. And so he quitted it.
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