A girl of twelve lay there asleep. Even thus she had the odd, motherly, responsible look so often to be noticed in girl-children of her age in poor parts of London, but its tenseness was gone, and did no more than qualify the ordinary placid, unseeing wonder that belongs to a sleeping child’s face. Bill Hooker took the candle away and entered the inner room.
Here was a larger bed, and on it, propped to near a sitting pose, was a puffy, blue-lipped woman, slack-faced and sallow. Her heavy lids lifted as the door opened, and she spoke peevishly.
“Late again, William,” she said. “They keep shockin’ late hours in the West End.”
“Yes,” he answered; “awful. An’ no ‘buses runnin’ at this time. But it can’t be ‘elped.”
“No,” replied the woman. “I ain’t complainin’ — I’m too thankful to know you got a place so respectable. It’s always bin such a worry to me all along, bein’ so low. You mustn’t lose it, whatever ‘appens.”
“Right, old gal — it ain’t likely.” He bent his bullet head and kissed the blue lips. “Bin all right?” he proceeded. “‘Ere, you must ‘ave yer dose.”
He turned to the mantelpiece and measured the digitalis which, quieting the diseased heart and abating the dropsy, was all that kept her alive.
She took it and let her head fall back again. “I ‘ad a bad flutter about ‘leven o’clock,” she said. “Polly was abed, an’ I couldn’t call ‘er. Is Lady Walker better?”
“Yus,” replied Bill. “She’s gettin’ on fust-rate. Took a ‘and o’ cards to-night with a lot o’ the other toffs. She gimme another jar o’ jelly for you — the sort what she makes herself; an’ she wrote a note with it this time, feelin’ so much better.” And with that he produced the carefully scraped jar and Naty Green’s exercise in feminine writing.
The lined and discolored face lighted up with joy. “Well, that is kind, ain’t it, William?” she said. “It’s ‘er bein’ bad, too, as makes ‘er feel for me like this. I’ll try and write to ‘er to-morrow if I can. I ain’t wrote anything for ever so long.”
Bill was fiddling with the residue of his parcel. “An’ ‘ere’s a bottle o’ port wine ‘is Lordship sent,” he said. “‘E wrote ‘is compliments, too.”
“Ain’t it beautiful of ‘im?” cried the poor creature on the bed. “What it is to be a real gentleman! Bill — William — I do ‘ope you’ll do all you can to please ‘im, an’ keep the job. It ain’t what you been used to, an’ you must be careful.”
“Right oh, ‘Liza, old gal — I’m careful. ‘Ave a drop o’ wine now, an’ get to sleep again.”
“Sit on the bed Bill — William. I’ll kiss you again, William. I want to tell you — you’ve bin a good ‘usband to me, an’ I never kep’ nothing from you. But forgive me — I doubted you in my own mind once or twice about this job at Lord Walker’s. I thought you might ‘a’ bin makin’ it up to please me, me bein’ that worried about anythink low. But I know it’s right now, an’ I oughtn’t to ‘a’ mistrusted you before — I ain’t quite right sometimes, I think, what with one thing an’ another to worry.”
“That’s all right, old gal,” responded Bill, staring very hard at the candlestick. “Don’t you worry. ‘Ave a drop o’ port wine.”
“Put it in that tea-cup, an’ you ‘ave some, too. You ‘ad to leave the porterin’ at the market, so’s to look after me all day, but, you see, it’s turned out for the best. Porterin’ was low to what this is. It used to worry me — Mother havin’ bin in the dressmakin’ and Father ‘andin’ the plate at chapel o’ Sunday ‘fore he died. So I don’t grudge bein’ bad, if it’s made us more respectable. We never ‘ad no quarrels, William, ‘cept over that, you an’ me. You was in steady work when we was fust married, an’ it was only you goin’ in trainin’ again that upset me. We never quarrelled, only over that.”
“All right, ‘Liza, — never mind all that. We was glad o’ what I won that time, but it’s all over— ‘t ain’t likely any one’s goin’ to back me nowadays. Ketch ‘old o’ the cup, an’ I’ll get ready to turn in.”
She took the cup, and sipped with relish. “It’s lovely, William,” she said. “Taste it.”
It had cost Bill a hardly-spared half-crown at a Shoreditch grocer’s; so he sipped with discretion, for the bottle must be made to last.
“Nobby,” he commented, returning the cup. “It’s just the same as what they drink with their supper every night, at Lord Walker’s; an’ often ‘is Lordship says, after supper, ‘Wrop up a bottle, William, for me to take to the theayter.’”
“Lor’, now — but there, expense don’t matter to them, I s’pose. An’ what did he say when he give you this B — William?”
“Oh, nothing much,” said Bill. “Just what any ord’nary chap ‘ud say. It was when her ladyship wrote the compliments, a-settin’ up on the sofa where she’d bin layin’. ‘Damme, Mariar,’ says ‘is Lordship—”
“What?”
“Mariar,” repeated the innocent Bill— “that’s ‘er pet name.”
“But you said ‘damme,’” replied the amazed invalid. “He don’t talk low, do he?”
“Why, no,” admitted Bill awkwardly; “not in general. ‘E’d bin havin’ some o’ the port wine, you see. ‘E said, ‘I’ll write some compliments, too,’ ‘e said, ‘an’ send a bottle o’ that port wine. I ‘ope it’ll do ‘er good,’ ‘e said, ‘an’ I’m sorry she’s so bad.’”
Bill looked a little anxiously at his wife, for he never felt sure of himself in these excursions into romance. But she was only surprised, after all.
“I shouldn’t ha’ thought ‘e ‘d talk to a lady like that,” she said; “but I s’pose they ain’t so partic’lar just among ‘emselves. But they’re very kind, an’ I do ‘ope you’ll keep the place, although they only called it temp’ry to begin with. If I was well enough to move, we’d go an’ live nearer, in a more respectable place.”
Bill breathed more freely, and trusted his invention no further, but prepared to take his rest in the jumbled bed that lay on the floor by the aide of his wife’s. The chief perplexity of his life was to maintain as best he could the broken-winded fiction that he had achieved the situation of supernumerary butler for evening duty at a house in the West End. His work at Spitalfields Market had ended when the doctor told him that his wife must no longer be left alone during the day. Polly must keep to school, or the “chunk” would be calling, with threats of a summons. So of necessity Bill Hooker must stay within during the day, to nurse his wife and measure her several doses of the physic that kept her alive, and to take his share — the child took the rest — of the household work; and only at night, when Polly stood guard, could he leave the place. So that it seemed something vastly like a gift of providence when he got his job at Ikey Cohen’s spieler.
He had slid into his deception almost unconsciously, never at first dreaming of the mountain of fiction into which it had since grown. His wife had aspirations of gentility to him incomprehensible but no doubt quite proper, and he humored them. The office of butler’s help in the West End sounded much better than that of guard and bully at a Whitechapel den, and so the deception began, with the invalid’s joyful concurrence. To her it represented a rise in the world, and she so brightened in its contemplation that Bill was tempted to elaborate and embellish and so run into danger, for he was a simple and unpractised liar. Even the name Walker he had used as a sort of compromise with his natural tendency toward honesty, for among his acquaintance it was the badge and ensign of gammon, and he experienced an odd relief of conscience in its use.
And so Bill Hooker laid his battered head to rest and slept. And, the morning being come, be rose and busied himself in the rooms with Polly till school-time, and after that alone. He washed cups and saucers, and he washed his wife’s face. He watered the scarlet runners on strings that climbed from the box on the sill of the window by her bed, and he wiped over most things in the place with a duster, beginning with the three little memorial cards in sixpenn
y frames that hung in remembrance of the three boy-babies that ‘Liza had failed to rear. And so the day went its common round, and ‘Liza tried to write to Lady Walker, and didn’t do it very well and decided to try again to-morrow.
That night Bill Hooker was home much earlier than usual. Lord and Lady Walker had gone out, and the butler had given him leave, it seemed; and perhaps he might not be wanted for a night or two. But out in Spitalfields and Whitechapel, where ‘Liza could not hear, they said that Ikey Cohen’s spieler had been raided at last, and most of those found there had been taken. Bill Hooker’s agility had saved him for the moment, it seemed; but he must have been spotted; and it was said he had spilt a policeman.
Thus it came to pass on the morning following that a police-sergeant with an urgent message for William Hooker walked in at the front door of the house — it was mostly open in the day-time — and made his way to the second floor. Polly was at school, and the sergeant, with the easy familiarity of the police in these parts, finding nobody in the first room, walked across and looked in at the second.
Bill’s back was turned as he stood washing saucers. The sudden apparition of the sergeant, with his familiar, business-like nod, struck the woman like a blow of ice. What was this — this? She gave a cry that brought Bill round with a start. The sergeant nodded again, very knowingly. “‘Mornin’, Hooker!” he said.
Bill’s thought was for his wife, staring and pallid. “All right, old gal,” he said hurriedly. “I know — it’s nothing!” And he pushed the sergeant forcibly into the outer room.
“Don’t you know better ‘n that?” he hissed fiercely. “She’s rotten in the heart — dyin’! Say it’s a jury — wanted on a jury, curse you! Say it’s a jury!” And he dragged him back to where the woman, staring still and sitting erect, was now croaking faintly, “Bill! Bill! What is it, Bill?”
“Nothin’, old gal, nothin’! They want me on a jury, that’s all.”
And the sergeant, abashed and disordered, confirmed him. “It’s for a jury, mum,” he said. “I’ve come to see if Mr. Hooker can serve on a jury. Very sorry to disturb you, but there was nobody out there, and I didn’t know you was ill. It’s just a jury — only a jury.”
The woman gave a long sigh, staring still. “Hold me, Bill! Hold me!” she said faintly, sinking back into his arms. “Hold me tight, Bill! Don’t let me go! Go on the jury, Bill — it’s very respectable, on a jury — you’ve never been — hold me tight — don’t leave me! An’ I ain’t written to Lady Walker — hold me, Bill. Don’t let me — Ah — !”
The sergeant walked softly out. And Bill held her, and held her; but not even Bill’s arms could hold her tight enough now.
FIDDLE O’ DREAMS
I.
THE thatched cottage made a fantastic interruption in the midst of the drab street. You came upon it after traversing many lengths of just such street, all laid out in parallel blocks, all of one pattern, and all labelled on the name-plates at the corners, not streets, but roads. The streets had been built just long enough ago to have grown grimy rather than raw; and the grime had fallen on houses and tenants alike. Perhaps it was rather that as the houses had grown smokier the tenants had changed for the worse, and less cleanly successors had come to match the houses and to deepen the grime.
Iron palings, miles of them, of the same pattern every one, enclosed small and barren forecourts before all the houses in the neighbourhood, save only for this one thatched cottage. Here was a break of low white wooden fence, kicked and despitefully used externally, and enclosing the dusty remains of a quickset hedge. Within the hedge flowers were visible in the summer days and were stolen in the summer nights; stocks and wallflowers and lady’s-purse and candytuft, as they had grown year by year beyond memory when there was no grime in this part, and the hedge had bordered Bell Brook Lane. Now Bell Brook Lane, straightened and prisoned in brick, was called Cobden Road, and the brook was usefully carried through a sewer.
Even on the thatched cottage some trace of grime had fallen, though it had been stoutly resisted for many years; and the thatch was a little less tidy than it used to be when the tenant kept it in repair with his own hands, and showed a pride in the band of fancy thatching that spanned the roof half way between ridge and eaves. For the tenant, who was landlord too, had grown old among his wallflowers and behind his crooked little casements — old and lonely. Through all the years while the fields were green about him he and his wife had kept their habitation gay with flowers and clean with fresh paint; and still the same when the noise and stink of London had begun to creep into this corner of Essex. The tide of brick and grime had washed nearer and nearer, pushing a scum of brickbats and cankered meadows before it; but Golden Lea and his wife had stood their ground and kept their place as it had always been kept. The cottage had been his father’s before him, as also had his trade as wheelwright. But with the nearing of the town the trade had withered, and the boys had gone abroad. As for the old people, though the trade was gone, something was left to live on, and they entrenched themselves in their cottage and its garden; and the hamlet and its fields and hedges shrivelled about them.
The smoke and the blight came on inexorably and lapped them in. The hedges were torn from the sides of Bell Brook Lane, and the trees were cut down. For a while — a short while — there was a smell of lime and a dust of lime and brick, and there was no venturing forth after dark for fear of stumbling among heaps and poles, and falling into holes; and then the line of lime and bricks and blighted fields swept on to the country beyond them, and they lived in another world.
Anxious little men opened new little shops, and shut them soon and vanished. Bigger shops were built in the main road, half a mile off, and the main road itself was torn up and laid with tramlines, and set with iron posts and wires under which electric cars roared and clanged. In a place where Golden Lea as a boy had found a wheatear’s nest in a rabbit-hole, a soap-works rose, with tall chimneys and a choking stink. And the tide of streets was carried so far beyond Cobden Road that there was no finding a patch of turf, even at the end of a long walk. The drab street was everywhere; and at the street-corners mean-faced men preached lies, envy and malice.
Golden Lea and his wife grew white and bent, the woman sooner than the man. Still he tended his garden bravely, and painted the fence more frequently, as it needed. But she turned her face inward, away from the streets. If she looked out of the window it was from the back, where some part of the old church could be seen, standing its ground still like the cottage. And it was so the old woman sat, looking through that window, when it came to pass that Golden Lea, for the first time in his life, spoke to her and got no answer.
“Jenny,” said the old man, “the lavender is dead.” And then again he said “Jenny!”
But she had answered another and a silent call.
II.
AND now it was that the cottage lost its brightness, and the thatch grew less tidy; for now the old man’s face was averted in its turn. The hedge straggled and withered, and the vine that for years had ceased to bear fell away from the wall. London sparrows were free of the rotted and broken bee-skeps at the far end of the dank garden, and Golden Lea was so little seen that it seemed reasonable among the neighbours, when they had time to think of anything but their own concerns, to call him the old miser.
So things were in the drab and smoky street on a day when out in green Essex, miles away, the cuckoo was calling and the white was breaking on the thorn. Here the day might have been of any season, save for the hint now and then, of a patch of blue in the grey sky. And here came, wandering up the street from nowhere, a fiddler, strange and gaunt.
Scant but long and curly grey locks straggled over his humped coat-collar, from under the brim of a high-crowned hat. His threadbare and skimpy coat hid nothing of the crank boniness of his frame, and the dust of country roads was thick on his boots and trousers. Black and piercing eyes, eyes that seemed younger than the strange great-boned face they were set in, peer
ed over high cheekbones, and from the sides of a great hooked nose. High-shouldered and shambling, he came up the street, gazing right and left on the grim little houses that were so much alike, till he came to the thatched cottage. Here he stopped, regarding the cottage with much attention. Then he advanced to the low white gate and put his fiddle under his chin.
His great knotted fingers spread wide over the neck and fingerboard, so that the fiddle under his long, whimsical face seemed grotesquely small. But when he drew his bow across the strings, all the breath of that poor street was hushed at the sound.
To the ears of Golden Lea in his cottage came a voice from a lost world. The fiddler played The wind that shakes the barley; but only once had the old man heard it so played before; so that it grew upon him that this was a poignant dream, and he sat motionless lest he should disturb it. Sweet and clear and blithe ran the air, till the old man thrilled to an agony of fear that the dream must break; when with a turn and a long, swinging note the fiddle suddenly dropped into To-morrow shall be my dancing day.
Surely no dream, this. The fiddle laughed and turned and lilted and sang like a human thing. This the old man had heard, too; but it was fifty years ago — more. Yet the wizard music so reached his soul that he heard the very words again, the words forgotten a lifetime back :
To-morrow shall be my dancing day,
I would my true love may so chance
To hear me sing from far away
To call my true lore to my dance.
Sing O! my love O!
My love, my love, my love!
And this hare I done for my true love!
He rose and looked from the window, and there stood the strange fiddler, his long, knotted fingers spidering over his instrument, and his black, piercing eyes fixed on Golden Lea’s. As their gaze met the voice of the fiddle rose merrier still, and the old man turned, unresisting to the command of its call, and came into the garden.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 267