Dermot gave me the address, and I said I’d be there. Then I went, leaving Sheila unpacking the lunch basket on the lovely table. I shouted back through the open window, as I turned the horse into the road: “I may bring a friend.”
*
Now why had I said that? I turned to the right into Wilmslow Road, driving back towards Hulme, and I kept on asking myself: Why did the idea come to me to take Nellie Moscrop to see Dermot and Sheila? And I had to say that it was simply because she had become so accustomed, so familiar. For the greater part of a year now she had grown on me like a habit. The chapel and the class meeting, one or two week-night lectures at Oddy Road, a chapel society or two. At one of them I had been induced to read a paper on the novels of Charles Dickens. It was a good paper. I still have it. I have read it recently and was not ashamed of it. I kept it because it was the first piece of writing I managed to finish. Nothing else had been finished. Both Nellie—very timorously—and old Moscrop in a brutal matter-of-fact fashion over the ludo board—inquired from time to time about the novel. It made the blood rush to my head. I hated to be asked about anything I was writing, particularly when it was going dreadfully; but I managed polite answers.
“Polite answers” about summed up my relationship with Nellie. I couldn’t but be aware of her hovering and enveloping presence, particularly as her father again and again emphasised it.
“Cooking’s not what it used to be, Nellie,” he said one night as we all sat at supper.
The poor girl’s agitation was at once extreme. She was a born housewife, and was touched to the quick. The frown deepened between her eyebrows, and without speaking she gave puzzled looks first at him, then at the excellent food on the table. Old Moscrop, who sat opposite me, allowed one eyelid to rise, then fall in a slow-motion wink. “I mean,” he explained, “it’s better than it used to be when you had only your poor old father to consider. Feed the brute—eh?—if I may coin a phrase—feed the brute.”
At that, Nellie’s confusion became greater than ever. She had nothing to say. There was nothing to say. I had myself noticed the gradually intensified attention she had given to the table.
It was not only that. She kept my room spotless. My metal pen-tray and inkwell were always being polished, and, though I had protested that it was not her job, she cleaned out my fireplace and relaid the fire every time I lit it. She insisted on my wearing extra clothing when the weather was very cold, and once, when I looked for my spare shoes, I found that she had sent them to the cobbler because one had a small leak.
When we went out together she spoke but little, yet I could feel the happiness in her heart. If by accident I touched her I was aware of the shock that went through her to the marrow. That night when I read the paper on Dickens she sat listening to me with glistening eyes as though I were a prime minister proposing some copper-bottomed scheme to secure the well-being of the nation; and when some misguided fool suggested that perhaps Miss Moscrop would propose the vote of thanks, she got on to her legs, trembled, and sat down, shaking her head.
Altogether, there was no doubt that Nellie was in love with me. I didn’t feel even an egotistical pride that, without effort, I had achieved this miracle. It was hardly possible to conceive one human being less enthusiastic about another than I was about Nellie. And yet those words I had shouted to Dermot put the whole situation on a different footing. Hitherto, we had gone nowhere together save at her invitation. Now, for the first time, I was proposing to invite her. The words had come almost unconsciously to my lips. I remembered old Moscrop’s question: “What about the bakery when I’m gone?” Was that it? The bakery was not grandeur, but it was a sort of security. It was a place where a man could be his own boss, and get down in comfort to other things which he might wish to do. I was not aghast at this sudden beam of insight into my own mind. I just shut off the beam quickly and drove home.
*
There was a snap of autumn in the air the next morning. When I had got the bread van loaded, I slipped into the living-room, to drink a final cup of tea before setting out on the round. It was another of the small domestic habits I had got into, and in which Nellie pampered me. Moscrop was pampered too. Everything was done for him in those days. I had been nearly a year under his roof, and bit by bit I had learned most of what was to be known about his business and had taken off his hands one responsibility after another. First under his direction, and now using my own intelligence, I was doing all the buying for the business, and deciding such matters as when a defaulting customer should be struck off the supply. Moscrop’s asthma was going from bad to worse, and now the paroxysms seized him almost daily. It was small wonder that he got up later and later, and on that morning in October, 1891, when I returned back for my cup of tea, he was just sitting down to his breakfast. The Manchester Guardian was open on the table before him.
He looked up when I entered the room. “Parnell’s dead,” he announced.
“Oh,” I said, for Parnell dead or alive meant nothing to me.
Nellie came in from the kitchen, carrying a teapot. “Wasn’t he a bad man?” she asked.
“He was an adulterer,” Moscrop exclaimed, his face going turgid with passion, “an adulterer, and a traitor, too.”
One did not lightly use the word adulterer in those days in the presence of a girl like Nellie Moscrop. She placed the teapot hastily upon the table and retreated to the kitchen. When she returned with her father’s eggs and bacon, I saw that her face was burning, and, as Moscrop was still glowering at the paper and looking as though he might burst out again at any moment, I said, to ease the tension: “Nellie, a friend of mine has asked me to have supper tonight with him and his wife. Would you like to come with me? He’d be glad to meet you. And his wife’s a very nice girl. They’re just about our age.”
The crimson in Nellie’s cheeks did not diminish, but now I knew it was not for the adultery of Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell. “I’d love to,” she said. “May I, Father?”
Moscrop, too, forgot his rage. “May I, may I,” he mimicked wheezily. “We’ve got a dutiful daughter, haven’t we? Always wondering whether what she does pleases us, eh? Well, well, well. Do something to please yourself for once, my girl. And this pleases you, eh? I can see it does. Yes, I can see it does.”
He wandered on heavily, driving her from the room again, and when we were alone he gave me one of his stupendous winks. “Bill,” he said, “none but the brave deserves the fair, if I may coin a phrase”; and that drove me out, too. I wanted to offer him no chance to wish me luck, which he was clearly on the point of doing.
*
We walked all the way to Dermot’s house that night. It is a good step from Hulme to Ancoats, where he was still living, hut interesting enough. Near as Hulme is to the heart of Manchester, Nellie’s time was so closely divided between home and chapel that she rarely visited the great shopping streets. So we wandered through Oxford Street, and across the big open space of Albert Square to Cross Street, and went slowly up Market Street. Then we turned off to the left through the mean streets that led to Ancoats. It was all a grand adventure to Nellie. The mere thought of going to a meal with strangers was to her exciting and a little disturbing.
“D’you think they’ll like me?” she asked nervously, as we turned into Dermot’s dingy street.
“Good gracious,” I said rather crossly, “why should they not like you? Always try to look at it like that. Don’t get into the habit of looking down on yourself. Dermot and Sheila are intelligent, courteous people.”
“Are they Catholics?” she asked, and the fear of the Scarlet Woman was in her voice.
“I don’t know what they are. They’ve never mentioned religion to me, and if I were you, I wouldn’t mention it to them. Anyway, here’s their front door. Don’t you think it looks a treat?”
Evidently Dermot was not going to hide under a bushel his light as a decorator. It was by now dark, but the light of a street lamp fell upon the door, painted an olive green that shone
like silk, and decorated with a lovely brass knocker wrought in the conventional but always to me pleasing shape of a lion’s head with a ring passing through the mouth. It was an agreeable door to find in that miserable little street.
Dermot and Sheila both came to the door full of welcome, and when they had drawn us into their sitting-room, even Nellie’s reticence dropped enough to permit the exclamation to be drawn from her: “How beautiful!”
“D’you know, Miss Moscrop,” Dermot laughed, “I believe it is! You see what Bill misses by giving the cold shoulder to his friends.”
“And what we miss, too,” said Sheila, “when he doesn’t allow us to meet his other friends.”
“You’re full of blarney, the pair of you,” I protested, “but this is a lovely room.”
“Just advertisement,” said Dermot. “I’ve got to stun my clients. Coming in and out of that bloody street, they get the full sense of contrast.”
Nellie stared hard on hearing a forbidden word so gaily spoken, and Sheila said: “Dermot, try to be bloodless this evening, will you?”
Dermot gave a loud self-accusing laugh, crossed over to Nellie, and knelt before her with his head bowed. “Strike me, Miss Moscrop,” he said. “Smite the devil out of me, if you think such words devilish. Anyway,” he added gravely, “I’ll say it no more. ’Twas not courteous.”
The room we were sitting in had been stripped down to the plaster and painted white. “You’ll forgive the fireplace,” said Dermot. “That’s the landlord’s, and I can’t touch it.” The floorboards were stained and polished, and in front of the fireplace was the first white rug I ever saw in my life. The curtains, too, were a new idea to me. They were of a rich material, deeply red, and what was strange about them in a cottage home was that they did not merely cover the window. They were hangings, not curtains. They hung in graceful drapery over the whole wall. One small low table stood in front of them, and on it was an earthenware pitcher containing white chrysanthemums. There were a few beautifully-made book-cases stocked with volumes whose bindings were all of vivid colours. The only other furniture in the room was a big billowy divan and two easy chairs; and the light was from a lamp, shaded with parchment-coloured silk, on a stand of finely wrought iron. Sheila went well with that room. She wore a long Pre-Raphaelite-looking dress of dusky red that suited the dark vivacious beauty of her face.
“The worst of these two-up-and-two-downs,” said Dermot, “is that we can’t have a dining-room. This is very nice to sit in, but we shall have to feed in the kitchen. I haven’t tried to make that a work of art, because I shall be out of this as soon as I can. So come on now, and enjoy the beauty of contrast.”
The contrast was striking enough, though Sheila’s kitchen was spotless. The chairs and the table, which was covered by a red-and-white check cloth, were of Dermot’s new simple workmanship, and everything superfluous had been swept out of the room. Sheila brought a steak-and-kidney pie straight from the oven to the table, and Dermot produced a bottle of wine from the dresser.
“This to grace a rare occasion,” he announced, “indeed, two rare occasions. One, the return of William Essex to the friends of his youth; and, two, the receipt of Dermot O’Riorden of his first cheque. My client has paid up today, with a handsome testimonial thrown in.” He held the bottle of Burgundy towards Nellie’s glass. “Miss Moscrop, permit me.”
Nellie, with a little panic-stricken gesture, placed her hand over the glass. “I’m a teetotaller,” she said, in a small frightened voice. Sheila at once filled her glass from the water-jug.
“You, Bill?” Dermot asked.
“Yes. We must drink to the cheque.”
“Now safely in the bank. It came by this morning’s post, and before the morning was out I’d opened an account.”
“And drawn ten pounds out of it,” said Sheila.
“And drawn ten pounds out of it. But that doesn’t alter the fact that the account’s open. It’s a grand moment, Bill, when you open an account. You must try it some day.”
“I shall.”
“D’you make anything out of your writing yet?”
“Nothing,” I said ruefully.
“He doesn’t stick at it, Mr. O’Riorden,” Nellie exclaimed suddenly. “I do all I can to make him. I do wish he’d go on with it. He could do it. I know he could. You should have heard his paper on Charles Dickens.” Then she shut up with swift embarrassment; and Sheila said kindly: “He will, Nellie. May I call you that? Don’t try to rush him. Just leave him alone. Leave him alone when he doesn’t want to write, and particularly leave him alone when he does. There; I sound quite motherly. Dermot, the cheese and biscuits are behind you on the dresser.”
We drank to the cheque, and Dermot and Sheila drank to me and Nellie, and we then drank to them. It was all rather silly and childish, but happy and friendly, and when the two girls had put on aprons and carried the things to the scullery, Dermot and I went back to the sitting-room. He took out a tobacco-pouch and began to fill a pipe. “My latest vice,” he said. “Haven’t you taken to it?”
“No.”
“Oh, you must,” he said. “That’s what’s wrong with your writing. Come on; come and buy a pipe at once.”
“No, no. Don’t be daft.”
“Daft! You’ll thank me to your dying day. Come on, now. I insist on buying you a pipe out of my first cheque. You buy me something when you get yours.”
“Good. That’s a bargain.”
He shouted to Sheila that he’d be back in a minute, and we plunged out into the short bleak street that was now full of a thin fog. The lights of the tobacconist’s shop on the corner were an orange smudge till we were almost upon them. Dermot bought me the best briar pipe the shop had, together with an ounce of Smith’s Glasgow Mixture, and I bought myself a red rubber tobacco-pouch. The counter of the little shop was strewn with cheap periodicals. Dermot took one up. It was called Titbits. “Stick that in your pocket and study it when you get home,” he said. “That’s how you’ll make your money to begin with.”
Then we wandered back through the cold foggy dark. It was not till we were just outside the door that Dermot said: “That girl’s in love with you—madly in love with you. Did you know that?”
“Yes.”
“So long as you know. She’s a good girl. She’s honest.”
Sheila and Nellie were back in the sitting-room, with coffee on a little table. They sat on the big divan, and Dermot and I, smoking our pipes, on either side of the fire. Nellie watched my performance as though it were of unusual virtuosity, and Sheila chaffed me unmercifully, and pointed out the quickest route to the back-yard. But I didn’t suffer any of the qualms I had been led to expect, and I don’t think a day has gone by from that time to this without my smoking a pipe. Heaven help me! That night was forty-five years ago!
Forty-five years ago since Dermot drew that letter out of his pocket and said: “Oh, I was going to tell you, Bill. I got a letter from Fergus this morning. He’s thriving in the States. Fergus is my brother, Miss Moscrop. He went out to join my uncle in New York. Listen to this.
“‘My dear Dermot,—Why don’t you chuck your fretwork and come out here and join me? I’ve been asking you for years, but I’ll never be able to make you realise what you’re missing. The more I see of Uncle Con, the more amazing he appears to be. I simply can’t realise that he and father were brothers. These stores of his are beginning now to push out of New York and he swears that in the next ten years he will have one in every town of over 50,000 inhabitants in the States. Next week I go to Chicago, where we are opening up the first outside New York. I wish to the Lord you’d come and help to keep the money in the family. I am—let me say it modestly—already Uncle Con’s right-hand man, but there’s room for you, too.
“‘Believe me, Dermot, this is the life—incredible after Ancoats. But I’m getting used to it now, getting used to a house full of servants, getting used to seeing the old man signing 10,000-dollar cheques for charity.
&n
bsp; “‘One thing I can’t get used to is Uncle Con’s Irish republican mania. You know I’ve been a sort of confidential secretary to him for years now, and it’s been an eye-opener. This country is riddled with secret societies. The old man is always meeting the maddest Irishmen, and the amount of his money that flows down that drain is beyond belief. There’s a wizened little rat called Michael Flynn who’s for ever to and fro between here and Ireland, and he never goes from this house without a wad in his pocket. Look out for this chap Flynn. He’s in England now, and Uncle Con has given him your address. If he looks you up, I hope you will be more pleased to see him than I ever am.
“‘But that’s how it is, Dermot. It seems that in our family we can’t have two brothers simultaneously devoted to Irish freedom. Father never cared a hoot about it, but his brother’s mad, with a purely sentimental madness, because he’d no more go back to live in Ireland than he’d fly. And now there’s you with Cathleen ni Houlihan and the I.R.A. on the brain, while all I ask is to be allowed to get on with the job of taking the O’Riorden chain of stores from here to the Pacific coast. We’ll do it, too, a darn sight sooner than you’ll see a President running an Irish Republic.’”
“There’s plenty more like that,” said Dermot, “but that’s enough. What do you think of my brother, Miss Moscrop?”
Nellie blinked at him short-sightedly, and the pucker deepened between her brows. “Really, Mr. O’Riorden,” she said, “I know nothing about these matters, but your brother seems a very sensible man to me.”
Dermot’s eyes suddenly blazed with anger and contempt. “Yes,” he said, clapping the letter down upon the mantelpiece, “very sensible.”
Then, his voice rising to a shrill note: “D’you know nothing,” he cried, “of the way Ireland has been bled and butchered and drained white by this damned money-grubbing Empire of yours, by the fat landlords sitting on their backsides in London, while the peasants haven’t so much as a rotten potato to eat—”
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