A Poor Man's House Part 27

How she keeps a steady head pa.s.ses my understanding; at breakfast-time, for example, when the boys are clamouring for their kettle-broth or loudly demanding fish, or trying to sneak lumps of sugar; and the girls, nearly late for school, are asking what she wants from the butcher's or stores; and one or two of them require clean things, or something darned, or have not washed their faces or combed out their hair properly; and Tony's and my breakfasts are cooking; and the kettle is boiling out or over; and Tony is asking her where he has left his other guernsey, and everybody is talking nineteen to the dozen--and she wants her own breakfast too. It is at such a moment that she displays best her most characteristic gesture.

Most people who work with a will, possess some gesture or movement which is typical of, and sums up, the major part of their activities--the gesture that sculptors and painters try to catch. To lay out on home and family the earnings of a workman who is regularly paid, calls for skill and care enough on the part of a wife who has no reserve fund and must make the weekly accounts balance to within a few ha'pence. But successfully to lay out, and to lay by, the earnings of a man like Tony, whose family is large and whose money comes in with extreme irregularity, requires a combination of forethought and self-control which falls little short of genius. And it has to be done on a cash basis, for debt would worry Tony out of his wits. The family purse must necessarily be the centre, and the symbol, of Mrs Widger's household activities; a matter to which she must give more thought than to any other one thing.

"Mabel, I want you to go out for me," she says. "Get me my purse."

[Sidenote: _CHARACTERISTIC GESTURE_]

Standing, as a rule, by the dresser, she receives the purse into her hand, opens it meditatively, looks in, pokes a ringer in, tips the purse and peers between the coins as they fall apart; takes one or two out and replaces them as if they fitted into slots. Then with a wide-armed gesture, curiously commanding and graceful, she hands out to the child perhaps a ha'penny. "Get me a ha'porth o' new milk, quick!"

The purse is put away.

So striking is the little ceremony, so symbolic, so able to stop our chatter while we look, that we have nicknamed Mam Widger _The Purse Bearer_.

That is the name for her--Purse Bearer.

17

Downstairs in the front room there are two or three photographs of George, that he himself has sent home since that day he went off to the Navy. The earliest shows him still boyish, sitting small, as it were, and a little shy of his new uniform. In the latest, taken not long ago, nor very long in point of time after the first, he is sitting bolt upright, chest inflated, arms akimbo with a straight, level, almost ferocious look in his eyes. He has apparently taken a measure of the world outside Under Town, and is all the surer of his feet for having stood up against greater odds and for having walked the slippery plank of Navy regulations. "If you'm minded to run up against me," he seems to be saying, "come and try; here I am." The two photographs suggest the difference between a bird in winter and in the mating season.

George's uniform, in the later photograph, has become his spring plumage.

[Sidenote: _GEORGE HOME_]

When he sent word that he was coming home on leave, I was prepared for a great change in him, but scarcely for the new George. He used to be so like a cat on a sunny wall; used to lie along the stern seat of the _Moondaisy_ so lazy and content that only his ever-watchful eyes held any expression. He was deeply sunburnt: scraggy in the neck; strong and lissome, but not very smart.

He is returned home no less strong and lissome, and exceedingly smart.

The sunburn is gone; indeed there's many a maiden would envy his complexion; and his long stout neck, with the broadening bands of muscle, would delight a sculptor. The alert expression, that used to be more or less limited to his eyes, has spread, so to speak, over all his face, over the whole of him and into all his movements. He is organised; unified. In repose now, he would not be simply lazy; he would be _being lazy_. His features, rather indeterminate of old, have become curiously refined, almost delicate, almost supercilious (in the pride of young strength), but not quite either. It is noticeable generally that an orderly mental existence has great power to regularise the features, and in so doing, to refine them. Hence perhaps this refinement of feature in George; for if, in the effort to gain promotion, he has been putting his heart into his work--the routine work of his ship and the Naval barracks--it follows that his mental existence must have been very orderly and regular. But how far the total change in him is due to Navy discipline, and how far to his arrival at mating time, one cannot say, neither probably could he.

Among working people nothing so smartens a young man and so quickly sets him on his own feet as a little traffic with the maidens; especially when he can't get his own way too easily. George, I gather, is paying attention to two or three.

Whereas his toilet used to consist of dragging on trousers, guernsey and boots, and lacing up the last-named aboard his boat, if at all, it is now a function delightful to witness as he stumps backwards and forwards between the kitchen looking-gla.s.s and the scullery-sink. What a washing and spluttering! what a boot-blacking and hair brushing! what retouches and last glances into the gla.s.s! The cap comes off and is replaced at a jauntier angle, a ribbon is tied again, the lanyard is put just right, and George goes forth to a war that began before battleships were thought of. One makes fun of his t.i.tivations, and admires nevertheless. Pride o' life, I have heard it called. Hitching one's wagon to a star is doubtless good; so is driving one's wagon along mankind's track. Thank G.o.d we have still a deal of the monkey in us.

I should like to see how Master George would carry on the land campaign if he had money to spare. That, however, he has not. The presents he brought home for the whole family, as is customary, must have cost him a good deal. He has had, too, a spell in the Naval barracks--which means spending money on sh.o.r.e amus.e.m.e.nts instead of putting it by. And as he has bought some civilian clothes on the instalment system, and will have that to pay off, he cannot borrow much of his father or mother.

Being 'on his own' now, he does not, of course expect a supply of money from his father, nor on the other hand does Tony try to force his authority upon George. Whilst he was here, George met a few of his old chums up in the Town, and about midnight he came home rather drunk. We were all abed; he had to knock several times; and in the end Tony went down to let him in. 'Twas a good opportunity for a quarrel that would have wakened the whole Square. But Tony said nothing then. He saw George safely to bed, and merely remarked next day in George's hearing, that "'Tisn't gude to drink tu much if you can help o'it, specially when yu'm young; besides, it costis tu much." George was very ashamed.

[Sidenote: _MRS WIDGER'S DIPLOMACY_]

Mrs Widger it was who had the row over George's spree, but not with George, and owing to her clever diplomacy it was hardly a row at all.

Mabel rushed into the house at breakfast-time.

"Mother, is George come home?"

"Course he is. What next?"

"Well, Lottie Rousdon says as he come'd home last night an' yu an' Dad wuden' let 'en in. Drunk's a handcart, falling about, her says he was."

"Tis a lie!" began Mrs Widger loudly. Then she appeared to think of something; her eyes widened, and she spoke quietly.

"Who told yu thic tale?"

"Why, May Rousdon jest as I was coming in now. Her stopped me an' asked if what Lottie'd told her was true."

"Yu go an' tell Lottie Rousdon that if she has a minute to spare when she comes home this afternoon to clean herself [Lottie Rousdon is a day servant], as mother'd like to see her. Don't yu"--this with rising voice--"don't yu tell anything more'n that or I'll break your neck for yu."

Mabel rushed out full of importance.

"The lying b.i.t.c.h!" remarked Mam Widger.

Lottie Rousdon walked into the trap. She came in the early evening, feathers flying, very innocent. She was in a strange house, not in the Square or among her relatives. Mrs Widger was on her own ground. Both went into the front room.

"What for did yu--" we could not help hearing.

"Oh, I didn't, Mrs Widger; I'm sure I didn't----"

"Yu did!"

"Mabel," called Mrs Widger. "Go'n ask May Rousdon to kindly step this way."

May Rousdon came.

"Who told yu what yu told Mabel about George, this morning? Did _yu_ make it up?"

"'Twas Lottie told me, Mrs Widger."

"There! if I didn't think.... Don't yu ever say such a wicked thing again! Yu don' know what harm...."

The parlour door was shut fast. A hubbub went on within. After a time, Lottie, weeping, was led out of the house by her sister.

"The lying b.i.t.c.h," Mrs Widger repeated. "I've a-give'd it to her.

Making up that tale so pat as if 'twas all true! That's the sort o'

thing they used to put about when Tony and me was first married, but I fought 'em down, I did, an' I thought 'twas all stopped long ago. They tried to make out as 'twas me drove George to sea. n.o.body can't ever say I haven't luked after Tony's first wife's children so well as I have me own--but they _have_ said it, all the same, an' I've up an'

give'd it to 'em 'fore now. Whenever I used to correct the children, they'd only to run out o' the house an' they cude always find someone to listen to 'em and say as I was cruel to 'em and G.o.d knows what. One time, when I wasn't very well, I felt I cuden' put up wi' it any longer. But I did. An' here I be, same's ever. Pretty times us used to have, I can tell yu, when we was first married an' some of 'em put my blood up!"

I understand that she cursed several--literally kicked one or two--out of the house; but now when anybody is ill, or anything has to be done, she is the first person to be sent for; and when George said goodbye to her at the station, he wept.

18

[Sidenote: _IN THE BAR_]

I was in the Alexandra bar this evening, drinking bitter ale. Apart from the new saloon counter, it is an old-fashioned place, full of wooden part.i.tions and corners and draughts. The incandescent light was flickering dimly in the draught that the sea-wind drove through the window and the front door. Seated around the fireplace or against the painted part.i.tions, and standing about in groups, were fishermen in guernseys, ex-fishermen, some bluejackets, and some solid-looking men who were pensioners or sailors in mufti. A couple of repulsive lodging-house keepers (they eat too much that falls from the lodgers'

tables) were talking local politics with a foxy-faced young tradesman of the semi-professional sort. The barman, who had had enough to drink, was thumb-fingered, loud-voiced, hastily slow. Sometimes the sound of a heavier wave than usual broke through the buzz of conversation, and sometimes, when the conversation dropped, wave after wave could be heard sweeping the shingle along the beach.

A party of vagrant minstrels came to the front-door steps. They played a comic song, and the voices within rose in defiance of the music, so that when it stopped suddenly, they were surprised into silence.

Up through that silence welled the opening notes of Schubert's _Serenade_. n.o.body spoke. The barman took up a gla.s.s cheerily. "My doctor ordered me to take a little when I feel I need it," he said; and was _hushed_ down. Some edged towards the door, others sat back with faces and pipes tilted up, and others gazed down at the floor. A memory-struck, far-away look came into their eyes. Only the barman with his gla.s.s, and the tradesman in his smart suit, seemed wholly themselves.