Carnival Part 7

She had no feeling of awe towards Mr. Charles Raeburn, but rather looked upon him as a more extensive counterpart of Alfie, both p.r.o.ne to many deeds of mischief. She had no conception of her father as a bread-winner; her mother was so plainly the head of the house.

In the early morning her father vanished to work and only came back just before bedtime to eat a large tea, like Alfie, in the course of which he was reprimanded and pushed about and ordered, like Alfie, to behave himself. To be sure, he had liberty of egress at a later hour, for once, when in the midst of nightly fears she had rushed in the last breath of a dream along the landing to her mother's room, she saw him coming rosily up the stairs. He made no attempts to justify his late arrival with tales of goblin accidents as Alfie was wont to do. He did not ascribe the cracked egg appearance of his bowler hat to the onset of a baker's barrow. He seemed so far indifferent to the unfinished look of his clothes as not to bother to lay the blame on the butcher's boy. Her mother merely said:

"Oh, it's you?"

To which Mr. Raeburn replied: "Yes, Flo, it's me," and began to sing "Ta-ra-ra--boom--de--ay."

Even Ruby O'Connor, who, in earlier days at Hagworth Street, used to quell Alfie with terrible threats of a father's vengeance, gave them up as ineffective; for the bland and cheerful Charlie, losing the while not a morsel of blandness or cheerfulness, was fast becoming an object of contemptuous toleration in his own house. He was a weak and unsuccessful man, fond of half-pints and tales of his own prowess, with little to recommend him to his family except an undeniable gift of humorous description. Yet, even with this, he possessed no imagination. He was accustomed to treat the world as he would have treated a spaniel. "Poor old world," he would say in pitying intention; "poor old world." He would pat the universe on its august head as a pedagogue slaps a miniature globe in the schoolroom. He never expected anything from the world, which was just as well, for he certainly never received very much. To his wife's occasional inquiry of amazed indignation, "Why ever did I come to marry you?" he would answer:

"I don't know, Floss. Because you wanted to, I reckon."

"I never wanted to," she would protest.

"Well, you didn't," he would say. "Some people acts funny."

"That's quite right."

Hers was the last word: his, however, the pint of four ale that drowned it.

Jenny at this stage in her life was naturally incapable of grasping the fact of her mother throwing herself away in matrimony; but she was able to ponder the queer result that, however much her mother might be annoyed by Charlie, she did not seem able to get rid of him.

Alfie, with his noise and clumping boots, was an equally unpleasant appendage to her life, but for Alfie she was responsible. In whatever way children came about, it was not to be supposed they happened involuntarily like bedtime or showers of rain. Moreover, mystery hung heavy over their arrival. Edie and Alfie would giggle in corners, look at each other with oddly lighted eyes, and blush when certain subjects arose in conversation. Human agency was implied, and all that talk of strawberry-beds and cabbage leaves so much trickery. Alfie, bad habits and all, was due to her father and mother being married.

But why be married when Alfies were the result? Why not close the door against her father and be rid of him? And take somebody else in exchange? Who was there? n.o.body.

One foggy afternoon early in January, Jenny came back from school to the smell of a good cigar. She did not know it was a good cigar, but the perfume hung about the dark hall of Number Seventeen with a strange richness never a.s.sociated in her mind with the smell of her father's smoke. She was conscious, too, from the carefully closed doors both of the parlor and the kitchen, that company was present. The voice of a polite conscience warned her not to bang about, not to shout "Is tea ready, mother?" but rather to tread discreetly the little distance to the kitchen and there to await developments. If Alfie and Edie were already arrived by a punctual chance, she would learn from them the manner and kind of the company hid in the parlor.

The kitchen was empty. No tea was laid. Over her stole an extraordinary sensation of misgiving. She felt as if she were standing at the foot of a ladder watching Alfie about some mischievous business.

Presently Ruby returned from the scullery, like a sudden draught.

"However did you get in so quiet?" asked the newcomer. Then Jenny remembered the street door had been open.

"Who's in along of mother?"

"That's right. Be nosey."

"Tell us, Rube."

"I can't tell what I don't know."

"But you do know," persisted Jenny; "so tell us."

"D'you think we all wants to poke in where we isn't wanted, like you, Miss Meddlesome? How should I know?"

"Well, I told you yesterday what teacher called Edie, so tell us, Rube; you might tell us."

"There isn't nothing to tell, you great inquisitive monkey," Ruby declared.

Then there was a sound in the hall of a man's voice, a rich voice that suited somehow the odor of the cigar. Jenny longed to peep round the kitchen door at the visitor, but she was afraid that Ruby would carry on about it. A moment or two's conversation, and the street door slammed, and when her mother came back from the kitchen, Jenny was afraid to ask bluntly:

"Who was that?"

Instead she announced:

"We did sewing this afternoon. Teacher said I sewed well."

"You sew on with your tea," said Mrs. Raeburn. "And wherever can Edie and Alfie have got to?"

A week or two afterwards Jenny returned to the same smell of cigar, the same impression of a rich and unusual visitor, but this time the parlor door gaped to a dark and cold interior, and when Jenny followed Ruby into the kitchen, he was there, a large florid man, with a big cigar and heavy mustache and a fur coat open to a snowy collar and shining tie-pin.

"And this is Jenny, is it?" he said in the cigar voice.

Jenny kissed him much as she would have kissed the walrus he slightly resembled; then she retreated, finger in mouth, backwards until she b.u.mped against the table by which she leaned to look at the stranger, much as she would have looked at a walrus.

Her father came in after a while, and his wife said:

"Mr. Timpany."

"Eh?" said Charlie.

"Mr. Timpany, a friend of father's."

"Oh," said Charlie. "Pleased to meet you," with which he retired to a chair in a dusky corner and was silent for a long time. At last he asked:

"Have you been to Paris, Mr.... Tippery? Thrippenny, I should say."

"Timpany, Charlie. I wish you'd listen. Have you got cloth ears? Of course he's been to Paris, and, for gracious, don't you start your stories. One would think to hear you talk as you were the only man on earth as had ever been further than Islington."

"I was in Paris once some years back--on business," Charlie remarked. "I think Paris is a knockout, as towns go. Not but what I like London better. Only you see more life in Paris," and he relapsed into silence, until finally Mr. Timpany said he must be going.

"Who's he?" demanded Mr. Raeburn, when his wife came back from escorting her visitor to the door.

"I told you once--a friend of father's."

"Ikey sort of a bloke. He hasn't made a mistake coming here, has he? I thought it was the Duke of Devonshire when I see him sitting there."

"You are an ignorant man," declared Mrs. Raeburn. "Don't you know a gentleman when you see one? Even if you have lost your own shop and got to go to work every morning like a common navvy, you can tell a gentleman still."

"Are you bringing in any more dukes or markisses home to tea?" asked Charlie. "Because let me know next time and I'll put on a clean pair of socks."

Mrs. Raeburn did not bring any more dukes or marquises home to tea; but Mr. Timpany came very often, and Charlie took to returning from work very punctually, and, though he was always very polite to Mr. Timpany when he was there, he was very rude indeed about him when he was gone, and Jenny used to think how funny it was to wait for Mr. Timpany's departure before he began to make a fuss.

Vaguely she felt her father was afraid to say much. She could understand his fear, because Mr. Timpany was very large and strong, so large and strong that even her mother spoke gently and always seemed anxious to please him. And looking at the pair side by side, her father appeared quite small--her father whom she had long regarded as largeness personified.

One day Jenny came home late from school and found her parents in the middle of a furious argument.

"I ar'n't going to have him here," Charlie was saying, "not no more, not again, the dirty hound!"