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Title: Apples of Gold
Date of first publication: 1923
Author: Warwick Deeping
Date first posted: March 7, 2015
Date last updated: March 7, 2015
Faded Page eBook #20150323
This ebook was produced by: Marcia Brooks, Al Haines, Mary Meehan & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net
Apples of Gold
By
Warwick Deeping
Author of "Sorrell and Son," etc.
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
First published September 1923
Second Impression January 1924
Popular Edition March 1926
Printed in Great Britain
Table of Contents
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
XLI
XLII
XLIII
XLIV
APPLES OF GOLD
I
Mary Nando's girl had gone to see her mother, who was sick, and Tom Nando was sitting on a stool in front of the kitchen fire, roasting an apple on the point of an old sword. His wife had lit a candle, and was settling herself to a comfortable hour with a couple of sheets and her darning needle, when she thought that she heard the sound of a knock.
She glanced at her husband, who was absorbed in watching the apple sizzling on the point of the sword.
"Did you hear aught, Tom?"
"Nothing," said he, "but what you might count on hearing with the wind as it is."
"I thought I heard a knock."
"A shutter banging, or a tile blown off into the yard."
"Maybe you are right."
She began to spread one of the sheets over her knees, but she was not to get very far with her mending, for the sound came to her again through the bluster of a March night. Her pretty brown head cocked itself questioningly. She had the eyes and the air of a thrush, a brown thrush on a bough, and in their courting days Nando had told her so.
"There it is again! I'll go and see."
She laid the sheet on the table, rose, and taking the candle, went out into the passage between the parlour and the kitchen, leaving her husband by the fire. The door opening into Spaniards Court was barred, and before raising the bar she challenged the possible visitor.
"Is anyone there?"
A voice answered her, a voice that was like a little moan in the crying of the wind:
"Mary—Mary Nando."
There was something else, and Nando's wife undid the door. Her movements were quick and agitated, as though the voice had put her in a flutter. The light of the candle showed her the figure of another woman, and the flicker of the wind-blown light gave to both figures a suggestion of tremulous emotion.
"Mary!"
"Miss Rachel—you!"
"Don't speak; let me come in. O, Mary!"
The door was closed, but a sudden gust had blown out the candle, and in the half-darkness of the passage the two figures seemed to merge as though one of them had put her arms about the other.
"Are you alone, Mary?"
"My man is by the kitchen fire. Come into the parlour. There's no fire lit."
"O, what does that matter!"
"My dear, how you tremble! Hold on to me."
Thomas Nando heard no more than the murmuring voices of the two women. They went into the parlour, and the door was closed; and since his wife was not there to eat the apple he had been roasting for her, he ate it himself. He assumed that a gossip of Mary's had dropped in to borrow something.
The world is always borrowing, and Mary Nando was a giver; nor did Thomas conceive that he had any grievance against his wife because she happened to be generous. She was made that way, and hadn't he married her because she had a soft voice and a warm heart? But there was one thing that she had not given him, and he regretted it, and so did she. Poor Mary! It was the one great bitterness in her life, the feeling that she had failed him; and in thinking of it Nando got up and took his tobacco-box from the dresser, his pipe from the mantelshelf. He sat down again on the stool, lit his pipe with a coal from the fire, and pondered the old problem. He was a smallish man, very well built, with a grave and rather massive face, a man who was given to long silences and sudden sharp humorous sayings. He was a fencing-master, and he kept a fencing school, and he kept it with a dignity which was part of his character. Nando's was the best place of its kind in the kingdom, a school to which gentlemen came to practise sword-play; it was no resort for dissolute youngsters and fashionable bullies—they could go elsewhere, for Thomas Nando would have none of them.
But he wanted a son, a boy who would grow up and join him in teaching gentlemen a craft that every gentleman should know, a son who should be as good a man with the foil or the back-sword as was his father. No, better! Nando had pride.
"What, still talking!"
He was momentarily attentive to the two voices in the parlour, but the unabated murmur of them persuaded him to return to his reflections. He leant forward and stirred the fire with the old sword which he used as a toasting-fork. He did not hear the door softly opened. His wife was in the room before he realized her presence. She watched him with those thrush-like eyes of hers as she crossed to the fire.
"Tom, see what I've got!"
He turned; he stared, the sword held poised in one hand, the clay pipe in the other, for Mary had a baby in her arms.
"Bless us," said he, "some one has been lucky!"
She gave him a look, a look of pain and of veiled reproach, and Nando wished that he had bitten his own tongue.
"A boy?" he asked, just for something to say.
"Yes."
"Who does it belong to?"
She bent her head over the child.
"To us, Tom, if you choose."
He was astonished, caught off his guard. He stood up, took a sort of peeking look at the thing in his wife's arms, and sat down again. She, too, sat down with a curious soft glance at him. Then, she bent her head over the child.
"What is the meaning of it, lass?" he asked her.
She told him, the old, familiar, tragic story of the woman who was waiting in Tom Nando's dark parlour. Her husband's grave face grew graver; he leant his elbows on his knees, and, staring at the fire, puffed hard at his long pipe. Nando came of Puritan s
tock, but he was kinder and more human than his forbears.
"So, you see, Tom, the poor lady thought of me. I wasn't her maid for five years for nothing. I saw the inside of that great house, and the hardness of the old man—her father. The Glyns are hard, and she was the only soft one among them."
Nando looked grim.
"Who is the father?"
"She will not tell. Do you blame her? But she says that if we will take the child, and keep her secret, she will see that we are not losers by it."
Her husband made a sweeping gesture with his right hand.
"Mary, I do no such thing as this for money. We carry our own heads on our own shoulders. But—I don't know——"
He stole a glance at her. She was bending over the child, and he saw the firelight on her hair, and the tender, caressing look upon her face. It touched him. It brought him a sudden feeling of understanding and compassion, a sense of deeper comradeship with the childless, lovable creature who was his wife.
"Let's look," he said, stretching out a hand.
She made a quick yet gliding movement and showed him the child. It was a very quiet and happy child; one small, red bud of a hand tried to explore Nando's nose.
"Poor little thing!"
He glanced up at her.
"Mary—would you?"
"O, Tom," she said. "I—I have failed you so badly. I'm hungry, man, hungry."
He kissed her, and it was a strong man's kiss.
"Go and tell her we will do it for her. But the boy must be ours, mind you."
His wife's eyes were wet.
"You are a good man, Tom. I'll tell her. She understands that it means giving up. Perhaps you will come and speak to her, Tom."
He went. There was no light in the parlour save from the dimly dispersed glow of the kitchen fire, but there was sufficient light for Nando to see the figure of a woman seated in a chair. She rose with a little shuddering movement as he entered, and then stood still, tensely expectant.
Nando bowed to her.
"Madam," he said, "I ask no questions. But if we keep the child it must be for good."
He felt her eyes on his face. She was nothing but eyes; she hardly seemed to breathe, and her stillness was extraordinary.
"Yes," she said, "yes."
"One cannot chop and change with a child. If I bring him up as I should have brought up my own son I shall give him up to nobody."
She held out a sudden hand to him.
"It is fair. I promise. But—O—Mr. Nando—you will be kind to him?"
He took her hand.
"The boy will be as my own son."
Her hand was very cold. She withdrew it, steadied herself, smothered a spasm of emotion, and became desperately calm.
"I thank you. I cannot say more. Please send your wife to me, Mr. Nando. I wish to——"
He bowed quickly and left her, feeling that she wanted him to go, and that her courage was shaking at the knees. His wife was by the fire, nursing the child.
He gave her one look.
"Quick! Go to her, poor soul."
II
They christened the boy Jordan March, Jordan after Nando's Cromwellian father, March because he had come to them on a March night. Their tale was that he was a foundling, that they had heard a knock, and on going to the door had found the child lying on the step. Meg, the maid, spread the gossip among the neighbours, for she had returned to find Nando nursing the child wrapped up in a blanket, while his wife sat stitching at an extemporized frock. They had burned the clothes in which the boy had been brought to them.
Meg was a huge, square creature with black eyebrows meeting over the root of her snub nose, the ugliest and the most sentimental thing in petticoats within a mile of the Bagnio in Long Acre.
"Poor lamb—poor innocent!"
She fell at once to the child, and became his slave and champion; and so devoted were these two women that as the years went by Tom Nando took it upon himself to see that they did not spoil the boy. He thrashed him when necessary, but always with an air of solemn kindness; he taught him that it was infamous for a stout fellow to lie or to shed tears, so much so that when Jordan fell down and blooded his knees he came laughingly to show them to his father. He looked on Nando as his father and on Mary as his mother. They had decided to leave him in that simple faith until he should grow older.
At the age of seven Jordan was a big boy for his years, a frank but rather silent child with a pair of steady grey eyes and a sudden and happy smile. He loved Mary Nando, and he treated Meg with the didactic serenity of a young emperor. His love for Thomas Nando was steeled through with a young male thing's admiration and respect. His father was a wonderful man, and he—Jordan March Nando—was going to try and be just such another man as his father. Already he had his little wooden sword and cudgel, and in the evenings—between lessons in reading and writing—he and Tom Nando would play together the great game of the sword. The boy was happy and frank and courageous. He ran free, and could look to himself, and he was known to all the chairmen who waited with their sedan-chairs in the Piazza of Covent Garden. There was hardly a street he did not explore. He was hail-fellow-well-met with all the hawkers, the sausage and small-coal sellers, the basket-makers, the vendors of old hats and clothes. He had two or three carter friends who gave him rides on their wagons. Tom Birch—the fighting waterman—was his devoted crony. No one ever thought of hurting the boy or of teaching him vicious things; his grey eyes looked straight at you without any fear; he was a stout child, but no prig.
His memories of those days were many and vivid. He had a child's delight in colour and pageantry, in the great gilded coaches, in the fine gentlemen in their huge periwigs, in the pretty ladies of Pall Mall and St. James's. He loved the river, especially when it rained and the watermen put up the blue tilts on their boats. On Sundays the Nandos went to church at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and Jordan sat between Thomas and Mary Nando and watched everybody and everything. There were the days when his father took him fishing, for Nando was a great fisherman. He had his fights, infant affairs, and at the end of one of them, in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, a big, dark, saucy orange-girl picked him up in her arms and kissed him.
"Hey, my little buck, you'll be a boy for the women."
Jordan's dignity was so little offended that he hugged her hard round the neck.
"I'll marry you," said he.
"Will you, indeed!" said she, laughing and kissing him full on the mouth.
But his most vivid memories were of the fencing-school and of Thomas Nando, its master. The high, open-roofed room lay beyond the kitchen, and was entered from Spaniards Court by a broad doorway. It had a gallery at one end of it, reached by a winding stair, and here pretty ladies would sometimes sit and watch the work below. Mary Nando and her girl would carry up cups of chocolate to them, for "Nando's" had ways of its own and a fashionable reputation. There were benches round the room, and in one corner pegs on which the gentlemen could hang their hats and coats, also a shelf upon which they could lay their wigs if they so chose. The walls were decorated with weapons, huge old-fashioned rapiers, daggers, falchions, back-swords, and targets. Everything was very clean. The walls were freshly whitewashed each year.
Jordan had a stool of his own in the gallery. He liked to watch Bertrand, the assistant, and Thomas Nando giving their lessons. Particularly he admired his father, the poise and dignity of him, his grave skilfulness, his sudden smile when something amused him. Jordan never quite lost the thrill of seeing Nando putting himself on guard with a quiet "Now, sir." It always seemed to Jordan that his father was the greatest gentleman of them all.
Sometimes one of the pretty ladies would make eyes at the boy and let him share her chocolate.
"What is your name, my dear?"
Jordan always gave it with great solemnity.
"Jordan March Nando, your ladyship."
He would have his shoulder patted with a fan.
"That's right. You will do well for yourse
lf," one of them deigned to tell him, and she was a famous and experienced judge of men, especially of men as lovers.
There was one day in the year that always puzzled Jordan. He had his hair brushed by Mary Nando, was dressed in his best suit, and made to sit by himself on a stool at the back of the fencing-room. He was not allowed to go into the gallery on that day. But what he did learn to notice was that a pretty, pale lady in black sat in one corner of the gallery with her face half hidden by a fan. Jordan found that her eyes remained fixed on him. She did not watch the fencing. And somehow, her eyes so troubled him that he would fidget on his stool.
One day, after his eighth birthday, he asked Mary Nando who the lady was.
"Mother, who is the lady with the eyes?"
"What lady, poppet?"
"The one who comes and stares at me on the day I wear my Sunday suit and sit in the room."
Mary Nando laughed it off.
"O, nobody in particular, my dear. Perhaps you make her think of a boy of her own."
"She looks as though she had lost her boy," said, Jordan.
It was during the June after his eighth birthday that Jordan made his first visit to the St. Croix's house, not far from the church of St. Pancras. It lay among fields where men and women were tossing hay, and at the end of a lane where tall elms made a coolness. Thomas Nando and his wife were in their best clothes, and Jordan was wearing his suit of black fustian.
"Are we going to church, father?"
Nando told him that they were going to the christening of Mr. Sylvester St. Croix's baby daughter. Jordan had heard of Sylvester St. Croix. He was a Frenchman and a Protestant who had come to live in England many years ago, and had married an English wife. Nando and the Frenchman had made their friendship over a fishing-rod. So far as Jordan could understand it, Mr. St. Croix was a kind of clergyman in charge of a small meeting-house to which French people came. Nando spoke of him as being a very learned man, a divine.
"You must be very respectful, my lad."
"Of course he will be," said Mrs. Mary; "did you ever see him show bad manners?"
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