“Yes, a strange life,” answered the major, stretching out his gaitered legs and gazing up at the ceiling. I niver thought to be stranded in me ould age. If I hadn’t commuted I’d have had a fair pinsion, but I drew me money in a lump sum, and went to Monte Carlo to break the bank. Instead o’ that the bank broke me, and yet I believe me system was correct enough, and I must have won if I had had more capital.”
“There is many says dat,” grunted Von Baumser doubtfully.
“I believe it for all that,” the major continued. “Why, man, I was always the luckiest chap at cards. I depinded on me skill principally, but still I had luck as well. I remimber once being becalmed for a fortnight in the Bay of Biscay in a small transport. Skipper and I tried to kill time by playing nap, and we had the stakes low enough at first, but they soon grew higher, for he kept trying to cover his losses. Before the ind of the two weeks I cleared out of him nearly all he had in the world. ‘Look here, Clutterbuck,’ he said at last, looking mighty white about the gills, ‘this ship that we are in is more than half mine. I am chief owner. I’ll stake me share of the ship on the next game against all that I have lost.’ ‘Done!’ said I, and shuffled, cut, and dealt. He went four on three highest trumps, and an ace, and I held four small trumps. ‘It’s a bad job for my creditors,’ he said, as he threw his hand down. Ged! I started on that vyage a poor captain, and I came into port very fairly well off, and sailing in me own ship, too! What d’ye think of that?”
“Wunderbar!” ejaculated the German. “And the captain?”
“Brandy, and delirium tremens,” the major said, between the puffs of his cigarette. “Jumped overboard off Finisterre, on the homeward vyage. Shocking thing, gamblin’ — when you lose.”
“Ach Gott! And those two knives upon the wall, the straight one and the one with the crook; is there a history about them?”
“An incident,” the major answered languidly. “Curious, but true. Saw it meself. In the Afghan war I was convoying supplies through the passes, when we were set upon by Afreedees, hillmen, and robbers. I had fifty men of the 27th Native Infantry under me, with a sergeant. Among the Afreedees was a thumping big chief, who stood among the rocks with that very knife in his hand, the long one, shouting insults at our fellows. Our sergeant was a smart little nigger, and this cheek set his blood up. Be jabers! he chucked his gun down, pulled out that curved dagger — a Ghoorkha knife it is — and made for the big hillman. Both sides stopped firing to see the two chaps fight. As our fellow came scrambling up over the rocks, the chief ran at him and thrust with all his stringth. Be jabers! I thought I saw the pint of the blade come out through the sergeant’s back. He managed to twist round though, so as to dodge it. At the same time he hit up from below, and the hillman sprang into the air, looking for all the world like one o’ those open sheep you see outside a butcher’s shop. He was ripped up from stomach to throat. The sight knocked all the fight out of the other spalpeens, and they took to their heels as hard as they could run. I took the dead man’s knife away, and the sergeant sold me his for a few rupees, so there they are. Not much to make a story of, but it was intheresting to see. I’d have bet five to three on the chief.”
“Bad discipline, very bad,” Baumser remarked. “To break the ranks and run mit knives would make my old Unter-offizier Kritzer very mad indeed.” The German had served his time in the Prussian Army, and was still mindful of his training.
“Your stiff-backed Pickelhaubes would have had a poor chance in the
passes,” answered the major. “It was ivery man for himself there.
You might lie, or stand, or do what you liked as long as you didn’t run.
Discipline goes to pieces in a war of that sort.”
“Dat is what you call gorilla warfare,” said Von Baumser, with a proud consciousness of having mastered an English idiom. “For all dat, discipline is a very fine thing — very good indeed. I vell remember in the great krieg — the war with Austria — we had made a mine and were about to fire it. A sentry had been placed just over this, and after the match was lit it was forgotten to withdraw the man. He knew well that the powder beneath him would presently him into the air lift, but since he had not been dismissed in right form he remained until the ausbruch had exploded. He was never seen no more, and, indeed, dat he had ever been dere might well have been forgotten, had it not been dat his nadelgewehr was dere found. Dat was a proper soldier, I think, to be placed in command had he lived.”
“To be placed in a lunatic asylum if he lived,” said the Irishman testily. “Hullo, what’s this?”
The “this” was the appearance of the boarding-house slavey with a very neat pink envelope upon a tray, addressed, in the most elegant of female hands, to “Major Tobias Clutterbuck, late of Her Majesty’s Hundred and Nineteenth.”
“Ah!” cried Von Baumser, laughing in his red beard, “it is from a woman. You are what the English call a sly hog, a very sly hog — or, I should say, dog, though it is much the same.”
“It’s for you as well as for me. See here. ‘Mrs. Lavinia Scully presints her compliments to Major Tobias Clutterbuck and to his friend, Mr. Sigismund von Baumser, and trusts that they may be able to favour her with their company on Tuesday evening at eight, to meet a few frinds.’ It’s a dance,” said the major. “That accounts for the harp and the tables and binches and wine cases I saw going in this morning.”
“Will you go?”
“Yes, of course I will, and so shall you. We’d better answer it.”
So in due course an acceptance was sent across to Mrs. Scully’s hospitable invitation.
Never was there such a brushing and scrubbing in the bedroom of a couple of quiet bachelors as occurred some two evenings afterwards in the top story of Mrs. Robins’ establishment. The major’s suit had been pursued unremittingly since his first daring advance upon the widow, but under many difficulties and discouragements. In the occasional chance interviews which he had with his attractive neighbour he became more and more enamoured, but he had no opportunity of ascertaining whether the feeling was mutual. This invitation appeared to promise him the very chance which he desired, and many were the stern resolutions which he formed as he stood in front of his toilet-table and arranged his tie and his shirt front to his satisfaction. Von Baumser, who was arrayed in a dress coat of antiquated shape, and very shiny about the joints, sat on the side of the bed, eyeing his companion’s irreproachable get-up with envy and admiration.
“It fits you beautiful,” he said, alluding to the coat.
“It came from Poole’s,” answered the major carelessly.
“As for me,” said Von Baumser, “I have never used mine in England at all. Truly, as you know, I hate all dances and dinners. I come with you, however, very willingly, for I would not for nothing in the world give offence to the liebchen of my comrade. Since I go, I shall go as a gentleman should.” He looked down as he spoke with much satisfaction at his withered suit of black.
“But, me good fellow,” cried the major, who had now completed his toilet, “you’ve got your tie under your lift ear. It looks very quaint and ornamintal there, but still it’s not quite the place for it. You look as if you were ticketed for sale.”
“They von’t see it unless I puts it out sidevays from under my beard,” the German said apologetically. “However, if you think it should be hidden, it shall be so. How are my stud-buttons? You have them of gold, I see, but mine are of mother-of-oysters.”
“Mother-of-pearl,” said the major, laughing. “They will do very well. There’s the divil of a lot of cabs at their door,” he continued, peering round the corner of the blind. “The rooms are all lighted up, and I can hear them tuning the instruments. Maybe we’d better go across.”
“Vorvarts, then!” said Von Baumser resolutely; and the two set off, the major with a fixed determination that he should know his fate before the evening was over.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE GREAT DANCE AT MORRISON’S.
Never in
the whole history of Morrison’s boarding establishment had such festive preparations been known. The landlady herself had entered heart and soul into the business, and as all the boarders had received invitations for themselves and their friends, they co-operated in every possible manner to make the evening a success. The large drawing-room had been cleared and the floor waxed. This process left it in a very glassy and orthodox condition, as the cook discovered when, on bustling in, the back of her cranium came in violent contact with the boards, while her body described a half-circle with a velocity which completely eclipsed any subsequent feats of agility shown by the dancers in the evening. The saloon had been very tastefully laid out as a supper-room, and numerous other little chambers were thrown open and brightened up to serve as lounging places for those who were fatigued. In the parlour there were two card-tables, and every other convenience for any who preferred sedentary amusements. Altogether both Mrs. Morrison and the boarders, in solemn conclave assembled, agreed that the thing looked very promising, and that it would be a credit to the establishment.
The guests were as varied as the wines, though hardly as select. Mrs. Scully’s exuberant hospitality included, as already intimated, not only her own friends, but those of her fellow-boarders, so that from an early hour the rooms began to fill, and by nine o’clock there was hardly space for the dancers. Hansoms and growlers rattled up in a continuous stream and discharged their burdens. There was a carpet down from the kerb to the head of the lodging-house steps, “like r’yalty,” as the cook expressed it, and the greengrocer’s man in the hall looked so pompous and inflated in his gorgeous attire that his own cabbages would hardly have recognised him. His main defect as a footman was that he was somewhat hard of hearing, and had a marvellous faculty of misinterpreting whatever was said to him, which occasionally led to remarkable results. Thus, when he announced the sporting Captain Livingstone Tuck under the title of Captain Lives-on-his luck, it was felt that he was rather too near the truth to be pleasant. Indeed, the company had hardly recovered from the confusion produced by this small incident when the two Bohemians made their appearance.
Mrs. Scully, who was tastefully arrayed in black satin and lace, stood near the door of the drawing-room, and looked very charming and captivating as she fulfilled her duties as hostess. So thought the major as he approached her and shook her hand, with some well turned compliment upon his lips.
“Let me inthroduce me friend, Herr von Baumser,” he added.
Mrs. Scully smiled upon the German in a way that won his Teutonic heart. “You will find programmes over there,” she explained. “I think the first is a round dance. No, thank you, major; I shall stand out, or there will be no one to receive the people.” She hurried away to greet a party of new arrivals, while the major and Baumser wandered off in search of partners.
There was no want of spirit or of variety in the dancing at Morrison’s. From Mr. Snodder, the exciseman, who danced the original old-fashioned trois-temps, to young Bucklebury, of the Bank, who stationed himself immediately underneath the central chandelier, and spun rapidly round with his partner upon his own axis, like a couple of beetles impaled upon a single pin, every possible variation of the art of waltzing was to be observed. There was Mr. Smith, of the Medical College, rotating round with Miss Clara Timms, their faces wearing that pained and anxious expression which the British countenance naturally assumes when dancing, giving the impression that the legs have suddenly burst forth in a festive mood, and have dragged the rest of the body into it very much against its will. There was the major too, who had succeeded in obtaining Mrs. Scully as a partner, and was dancing as old soldiers can dance, threading his way through the crowded room with the ease begotten by the experience of a lifetime. Meanwhile Von Baumser, at the other end, was floundering about with a broad smile upon his face and an elderly lady tucked under his right arm, while he held her disengaged hand straight out at right angles, as if she had been a banjo. In short, the fun was fast and furious, and waltz followed polka and mazurka followed waltz with a rapidity which weeded out the weaker vessels among the dancers and tested the stamina of the musicians.
Then there was the card-room, whither the Widow Scully and the major and many others of the elders repaired when they found the pace too fast for them. Very snug and comfortable it was, with its square tables, each with a fringe of chairs, and the clean shining cards spread out over their green baize surfaces. The major and his hostess played against Captain Livingstone Tuck and an old gentleman who came from Lambeth, with the result that the gallant captain and his partner rose up poorer and sadder men, which was rather a blow to the former, who reckoned upon clearing a little on such occasions, and had not expected to find himself opposed by such a past master of the art as the major. Then the veteran and another played the hostess and another lady, and the cunning old dog managed to lose in such a natural manner, and to pay up with such a good grace, and with so many pretty speeches and compliments, that the widow’s partner was visibly impressed, a fact which, curiously enough, seemed to be anything but agreeable to the widow. After that they all filed off to supper, where they found the dancers already in possession, and there was much crushing and crowding, which tended to do away with ceremony and to promote the harmony of the evening.
If the major had contrived to win favour from Mrs. Lavinia Scully in the early part of the evening, he managed now to increase any advantage he had gained. In the first place he inquired in a very loud voice of Captain Tuck, at the other end of the table, whether that gentleman had ever met the deceased Major-General Scully, and being answered in the negative, he descanted fluently upon the merits of that imaginary warrior. After this unscrupulous manoeuvre the major proceeded to do justice to the wine and to indulge in sporting reminiscences, and military reminiscences, and travelling reminiscences, and social reminiscences, all of which he treated in a manner which called forth the admiration of his audience. Then, when supper had at last been finished, and the last cork drawn and the last glass filled, the dancers went back to their dance and the card-players to their cards, and the major addressed himself more assiduously than ever to the pursuit of the widow.
“I am afraid that you find the rooms very hot, major,” she remarked.
“They are rather hot,” he answered candidly.
“There is a room here,” she said, “where you might be cooler. You might have a cigarette, too. I meant these rooms as smoking-rooms.”
“Then you must come, too.”
“No, no, major. You must remember that I am the hostess.”
“But there is no one to entertain. They are all entertaining each other. You are too unselfish.”
“But really, major—”
“Sure you are tired out and need a little rest.”
He held the door open so persuasively that she yielded. It was a snug little room, somewhat retired from the bustle, with two or three chintz-covered chairs scattered round it, and a sofa of the same material at one side. The widow sat down at one end of this sofa, and the major perched himself at the other, looking even redder than usual, and puffing out his chest and frowning, as was his custom upon critical occasions.
“Do light a cigarette?” said Mrs. Scully.
“But the smell?”
“I like it.”
The major extracted one from his flat silver case. His companion rolled a spill and lit it at the gas.
“To one who is as lonely as I am,” she remarked, “it Is a pleasure to feel that one has friends near one, and to serve them even in trifles.”
“Lonely!” said the major, shuffling along the sofa, “I might talk with authority on that point. If I were to turn me toes up to-morrow there’s not a human being would care a thraneen about the mather, unless it were old Von Baumser.”
“Oh, don’t talk so,” cried Mrs. Scully, with emotion.
“It is a fact. I’ve kicked against me fate at times, though. I’ve had fancies of late of something happier and cheerier. They have come on
me as I sat over yonder at the window, and, do what I will, I have not been able to git them from me heart. Yit I know how rash I have been to treasure them, for if they fail me I shall feel me loneliness as I niver did before.”
The major paused and cleared his throat huskily, while the widow remained silent, with her head bent and her eyes intent upon the pattern of the carpet.
“These hopes are,” said the major, in a low voice, leaning forward and taking his companion’s little ring-covered hand in his thick, pudgy fingers, “that you will have pity upon me; that you will—”
“Ach, my very goot vriend!” cried Von Baumser heartily, suddenly protruding his hairy head into the room and smiling benignantly.
“Go to the divil!” roared the major, springing furiously to his feet, while the German’s head disappeared like a Jack-in-the-box. “Forgive the warmth of me language,” the veteran continued, apologetically, “but me feelings overcame me. Will you be mine, Lavinia? I am a plain ould soldier, and have little to offer you save a faithful heart, and that is yours, and always will be. Will you make the remainder of me life happy by becoming me wife?” He endeavoured to pass his arm round her waist, but she sprang up from the sofa and stood upon the rug, facing him with an amused and somewhat triumphant smile upon her buxom features.
“Look here, major,” she said, “I am a plain-spoken woman, as my poor Tom that’s dead was a plain-spoken man. Out with it straight, now — have you come after me, or have you come after my money?”
The major was so astonished at this point-blank question, that for a moment he sat speechless upon the sofa. Being a man of ready resource, however, and one who was accustomed to sudden emergencies, he soon recovered himself.
“Yoursilf, of course” cried he. “If you hadn’t a stiver I would do the same.”
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 517