Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  “Go it, nuss-maid,” growled a voice at his elbow. And Mr. Deacon turned quickly to perceive the disgruntled humorist, late of the post, who, apparently despairing of better diversion, had followed his tracks.

  “Go it,” repeated the philosopher. “Pick ‘em up an’ cuddle ‘em. My eye, your missis’ll comb your ‘air for you when you take that lot ‘ome!”

  He glanced about him in search of a post — he looked curiously incomplete with no post — and, finding none, relapsed into morose contemplation.

  Mr. Deacon closed the hood and went on. At any rate, the scoffer was baulked of one triumph; there was no Mrs. Deacon. But his persevering steps could be heard following behind, albeit with an easy languor proper to Bank Holiday. It was Mr. Deacon’s pause that had enabled him to catch up; plainly he was making the best of an economical holiday free of personal exertion.

  Mr. Deacon hurried forward, and the scoffer lagged unswervingly behind. The garden of Miss Wicks’s house, as of Mr. Deacon’s own, was enclosed with a thick hedge, in which stood a gate; and it was with a sense of relief that Mr. Deacon heard this gate clang behind him.

  The house stood well back in the garden, and he had a winding course of gravel path to traverse, amid many flower-beds of diverse shapes. Miss Wicks was visible near the house, but her back was turned, and the contorted ingenuity of her garden-planning caused Mr. Deacon and the perambulator to execute many tacks and long reaches, like a ship beating up wind. As he executed these laborious manoeuvres Mr. Deacon grew aware of the delighted regards of a housemaid at a first-floor window, whose round and healthy face grew suddenly broader, and whose fist was stuffed convulsively against her mouth as she contemplated the deviously-approaching phenomenon. For an instant she vanished, and in the next had returned with another grinning housemaid, larger and shinier and more hilarious than herself.

  Vaguely Mr. Deacon wondered why the spectacle of an elderly single gentleman living next door, rather warm with exertion, pushing a perambulator-load of babies along many curvilinear garden-paths should so vastly entertain housemaids; and as he wondered he added a clause including parlourmaids and cooks, for presently another window revealed two more faces similarly exhilarated.

  Mr. Deacon became afflicted with an unreasonable sheepishness; for a moment he contemplated retreat, but the length of intricate garden-path behind him was much greater than that before, and he pushed on with confused misgivings. Would Miss Wicks laugh at him too?

  “Ha — good morning, good morning!” he said, with feeble geniality; and Miss Wicks turned.

  She did not laugh. Laughter was not a common habit of the exceedingly correct Miss Wicks, who now regarded Mr. Deacon and his charge with a gaze of chilly amazement.

  Panic spread through Mr. Deacon’s bones.

  “Good morning,” he repeated, with a flurried bow and a ghastly smile. “I’ve — I’ve brought some babies!”

  “Indeed!”

  The word is easy to write; but as Miss Wicks said it — not in twenty volumes! Mr. Deacon dimly felt himself guilty of some unimagined atrocity.

  “I — I hope you don’t mind?” he bleated, anxiously.

  “Really, Mr. Deacon,” came the reply, as from frozen altitudes, “why should I mind?”

  “So glad you’re so pleased,” he answered, desperately. “I felt sure you’d take to them. Your motherly instincts—”

  “Mr. Deacon — really!”

  “Eh?” gasped Mr. Deacon, blankly. “I — of course, what I meant was, with all your experience—”

  “My experience, Mr. Deacon?”

  “Yes — that is, of course, what I really mean is — very extraordinary how I got hold of them, really. You’d be most interested—”

  “Indeed, you are mistaken; I am not at all interested, I assure you.” And Miss Wicks turned toward the rose she had been tending.

  “Then, perhaps,” pursued Mr. Deacon, desperately gathering his scattered faculties, “perhaps you’d rather not take charge of them?”

  “Take charge of them, Mr. Deacon? Most certainly I shall do nothing of the kind!”

  Here the conversation was interrupted by a loud shout from the gate.

  “Garn! Don’t you believe ‘im, mum,” came the voice of the scoffer from the post. “It’s a yarn, mum. Don’t you ‘ave nothink to do with ‘em. Oh, he’s a shockin’ old bloke, that ‘usband o’ yours! You ‘ave a separation at the p’lice-court!”

  “What outrage is this?” cried Miss Wicks, turning on the unhappy Mr. Deacon, who quailed and cowered over the handle of the perambulator. “What ruffian associate have you brought to help insult me, sir?”

  “It’s a Toiler,” explained Mr. Deacon feebly. “A Toiler under a misapprehension. He only does these things on Bank Holidays. I — I — perhaps I’d better be getting along!”

  “I certainly think it most desirable,” bridled the indignant lady.

  And Mr. Deacon, much impeded by his umbrella, made a stumbling shift to turn the heavy perambulator about, and began to reverse his divagations among the garden-beds.

  But his visit had been observed afar from an upper window, through a pair of binoculars kept for such purposes by Mrs. Griffin, the most scandalous moralist in the village. A glance was enough, and in a trice Mrs. Griffin in such articles of outdoor attire as could be drawn about her as she descended the stairs was waddling furiously in the direction of Miss Wicks’s front gate. Consequently, Mr. Deacon had barely made the first tack on his return journey when Mrs. Griffin, in hasty disarray, burst into the garden and began from her end strategic movements designed to cut off the retreat of the perambulator.

  Miss Wicks regarded this invasion with horror unspeakable. Even the impenetrable Mr. Deacon, tacking about with his perambulator, was startled by the tragic distress of her demeanour. He could not in the least understand it, except as a part of the general unaccountability of the female mind, but he vaguely guessed that she had some decided objection to Mrs. Griffin making acquaintance with the babies, and that he was expected to prevent it.

  “Oh, good morning, good morning!” cried Mrs. Griffin, bearing down on the perambulator as directly as the sinuosities of the gravel paths permitted. “Why, bless my soul, Mr. Deacon, what have you got there?”

  “Samples!” cried Mr. Deacon, desperately.

  “Samples?” repeated Mrs. Griffin. “What sort of samples?”

  “Oh, just the ordinary kind,” replied Mr. Deacon, trying his best to push past. “Quite ordinary! Sort of samples you see every day!”

  At this moment the garden gate opened once more, and a new figure appeared; a tall stout, tightly buttoned man in a frogged and furred coat, a man with a red face, a black moustache, a bell-topped hat, and a cigar. Skipping the corners of garden-beds and striding quickly over the paths, he thrust himself with many bows and flourishes, between the perambulator and Mrs. Griffin, who seemed on the point of forcibly seizing the hood, spite of Mr. Deacon’s struggles.

  “Samples, madam, samples, as me de-arr friend says,” interposed the stranger, in a round and fruity voice, placing himself bodily before the object of Mrs. Griffin’s ambition.

  “Merely samples of an ordinary, everyday description, I assure you, madam, on me sacred honarr!” Here he bowed again twice, and signalled quickly with a hand behind him to hasten Mr. Deacon’s departure. “As to the exact species of sample, therre madam, you place me, as a gentleman, in a certain difficulty. Perhaps it will suffice if you allow me to observe, me de-arr madam that the subject would be better discussed with another of your own charming sex, when I have withdrawn. Permit me, me de-arr madam, to indicate the lady up the garden who will no doubt give you every information; and pardon me if I seize the opportunity to rejoin me de-arr friend with the — the samples!”

  Mrs. Griffin, stimulated beyond measure by this mysterious communication, made straightway for the hapless Miss Wicks; while the magniloquent stranger hurried after the fast-retreating Mr. Deacon.

  In the mind of
Mr. Deacon perplexity and panic were succeeded by bewilderment. Who was this affable stranger, and why should he come to the rescue out of nowhere? Revolving this puzzle, Mr. Deacon emerged from the gate, and barely noticed that the scoffer had found himself another post, and now accepted its support with a gloomy relish of the domestic revolution he supposed to be in progress in Mr. Deacon’s household. He barely noticed it because his whole attention was taken by a voice — a distinct voice, audible from under the hood of the perambulator.

  “Maria!” said the voice. “I’ll swear that was Filer!

  “Mr Deacon’s bewilderment was doubled. How soon did babies begin to talk like that? It was most extraordinary. He stopped to listen again, and with that he found the stranger by his side.

  “Well, my joker,” said the stranger, in a low voice, looking him hard in the eye “what’s the game?”

  “The game?” repeated the mystified Mr. Deacon. “I don’t understand you.”

  “Cheese that,” replied the stranger. “I suppose you want a bit for yourself, eh?”

  “A bit? A bit of what?” asked Mr. Deacon, amazedly, laying his hand by instinct on his own gate as they reached it.

  The stranger took another hard look at him and then at once resumed his earlier flowery manner.

  “I beg your pardon, me de-arr sir — I humbly beg your pardon! Of course, I should nevarr have doubted I was talking to a gentleman. Your own premises, sir? Ah — permit me!” He pushed open the gate and flourished and crowded Mr. Deacon and the perambulator into the garden. “Better in private, of course. Now, my de-arr sir, touching the contents of this, ah — vehicle?”

  “They seem very extraordinary babies,” said Mr. Deacon.

  “Ah, wonderful — wonderful babies indeed, sir” — this with a quick glance at Mr. Deacon’s puzzled face. “Truly wonderful babies, as you say. Family man yourself, sir?”

  “No, I’m a bachelor.”

  “Ah, precisely. You would be all the more surprised, I can well understand. May I inquire how they came into your charge?”

  Mr. Deacon made shift to tell the tale in a dozen words.

  “My de-arr sir, accept the heartfelt gratitude of a — what one might almost call more or less a father! Your devotion to these helpless infants has been equal to anything recorded in the annals of heroism. I will trespass no longer on your noble philanthropy. Their nurse is close at hand — a de-arr creature, devoted to these darling infants—”

  “Ah-h-h!” came a startling voice from the hedge, like a bull’s. “Me heart’s bleedin’ for thim blessed babbies!”

  “Shut up, Lanigan!” cried the tall man, angrily. “A male nurse,” he went on, to Mr. Deacon, “who is devoted to the de-arr children, and who was in charge of them this morning till he foolishly entrusted them to the care of a stranger on an emergency—”

  “Met a frind I hadn’t seen for years!” came the voice from the hedge again.

  “Was unavoidably detained—”

  “They’re that moighty slow behoind the bar at the Green Dragon!” wailed the voice.

  “Will you shut up, Lanigan? Was detained, as I say, and the stranger basely handed over her charge to somebody else. Fortunately, my de-arr sir—”

  “Misther Filer! Misther Filer!” came the voice once more, this time in a stage whisper.

  “What now? What?”

  “He’s there — he’s comin’ wid a policeman They’re talkin’ wid the man at the post!”

  “Who are? Who is it?” Mr. Filer’s voice was hushed now.

  “Whist! Sh-sh-sh!”

  Mr. Deacon, blank with amaze, and Mr Filer, frowning and pulling his moustache listened intently. There were hurried step on the road without, and then a dozen thing happened at once.

  In at the gate came a threatening, red-faced man in a white hat, dragging the local policeman with him and blaring denunciation at Filer. Down went both hoods of the perambulator at once, and over the side, with astounding agility, went both the babies in their white gowns. The nearest hedge was that dividing the two gardens, and through a hole in that hedge by the ground the two babies bolted like rabbits. The white-hatted man and the policeman turned and ran round by the gate for Miss Wicks’s garden, and Mr. Deacon, three-fourths demented, ran after them.

  Once returned within Miss Wicks’s gate an appalling sight met the eye. Mrs. Griffin sat gasping in a bed of geraniums, while Miss Wicks fled shrieking with her apron over her face, followed by the babies at a most amazing rate, with the white-hatted man after them and the policeman bringing up the rear. First Miss Wicks, then the babies, then the white-hatted man, and then the policeman vanished in a shrubbery, whence presently emerged the white-hatted man and the policeman only.

  “All right!” cried the white-hatted man. “They can’t go far now we know they’re here. But here’s one o’ the gang,” he added, pointing to Mr. Deacon. “My name’s Challis, of Challis’s Nat’ral Wonders, an’ I give this feller in charge for kidnappin’ my dwarfs! Three years’ contract that married pair had with me, straight and legal, and Filer and this chap ‘ticed ‘em away from me in a p’rambulator! Promised ‘em double salaries or summat, I s’pose. They’d find salaries want some gettin’ out o’ Filer, when it comes to the pinch! I’ll ‘ave the lor o’ them all right, but just you make sure o’ this feller!”

  The scoffer at the post was a difficult man to please, in general, but he always admitted that this particular Bank Holiday was a complete success. Mrs. Griffin, also, did manage to make something out of it, after all, when the first shock was over, at tea-tables; and Miss Wicks is slowly recovering under medical care.

  THE EAST A-CALLIN’

  I.

  SIR HUDSON BAGG’S title was brand new, and his country house was so newly occupied and recently furnished and freshly painted and lately aired that it seemed brand-new also, although it had stood in the same place for two hundred years. But the deeds of conveyance were as new as the house looked, and Sir Hudson Bagg and Lady Bagg were strangers in the county though desperately anxious to remain so no more; for Lady Bagg already, in her mind’s eye, saw the Baggs pre-eminent among the county families. At present, however, calls were strangely few and tardy, so that expedients were necessary, and Sir Hudson and Lady Bagg became patrons of the Philanthropic Society for Harassing the Indigent. That alone, of course, was not enough; it was merely a step. The next was to take so active an interest in the society that it became advisable to organize a great meeting and conversazione in furtherance of its principles to which everybody desirable in the county and out of it was invited, and for which Sir Hudson Bagg very kindly allowed the use of the Hall and grounds, where he and Lady Bagg were “at home” to all distinguished Harassers of the Indigent, and speeches and tea and resolutions and a garden-party took their parts in the confusion.

  The success was glorious. The Philanthropic Harassers were a society of very high patronage, and for some while Lady Bagg even dared to indulge a hope that a minor Royalty might be netted. This failed to “come off,” but the company was nevertheless sufficiently numerous and distinguished to constitute a triumph for the house of Bagg and the first of many. So much, therefore for Sir Hudson and Lady Bagg, who merely provide the house and grounds for this story as they did for the Philanthropic Society for Harassing the Indigent.

  The day was fine, and a large crowd of people brightened the grounds. At least some of them did, but a great proportion were a very serious-looking lot indeed. Bishops dotted the landscape, deans punctuated the lawns; one or two countesses were visible, and a duchess very nearly came, but not quite. The less distinguished Harassers pointed out the more distinguished to each other, and the more distinguished exhibited themselves with great affability. There were several quite respectable politicians, and three Labour members came in strange mixtures of clothes which had cost hours of thinking out to express their unutterable independence.

  “Why,” said one visitor to another indicating a clerically-attired figure in the di
stance, “I do believe that’s Aubrey Fitzmaurice!”

  “No, is it?” replied his friend. “I haven’t seen him since he buried himself in the East-end — not since he left Oxford in fact. Mightn’t have recognized him in those things.”

  The first speaker turned to a second friend and repeated his remark.

  “Why, so I believe it is!” answered this third observer. “Who’d have expected to see him here? I thought he didn’t believe in this sort of thing. I’ll go over and speak to him presently.”

  Each of these three pointed out the Reverend Aubrey Fitzmaurice to somebody else, for he was a man of celebrity among East-end parsons, and many tales were told of his whole-souled devotion to his work. A man of brilliant gifts, notable connections and some private fortune, he had married a wife of like mind with himself, and had gone to live altogether in one of the worst of the East-end parishes, cutting himself off entirely from his old acquaintance, and giving his whole time and faculties for the bettering of the people in his parish. He lived with them and liked them, it was said, and gathered the worst of them about him in a club, where he met them on equal terms, playing billiards with them, boxing with them, and sharing as much of their lives as they would allow. It was so great a change for this exquisite of Balliol in particular that he was noted and talked of above the generality of them that laboured east of Aldgate, though he displayed himself less than any, and had vanished wholly from his earlier world.

  “That,” said a lady in the crowd, who had just been told, “is Aubrey Fitzmaurice, who married Clara Tyrwhitt and hid her and himself in some parish in the East-end. They’ve made quite a mania of it. Nobody’s seen her since the wedding.”