Here and Hereafter Part 21

The landlady moved to the door. "Will there be anything else now?"

"A little tea, if it's not too much trouble," said Peters. "I have a partiality for tea."

"You shall have it," said Mrs Marks. She did a good deal with the manner and the tone of the voice. Peters vaguely understood that all this was exceptional, and must not occur again; he must not make a practice of taking up Mrs Marks's precious time by sheer garrulousness; and he must not get into the habit of ordering tea or anything else that he wanted--he must wait until it was brought to him spontaneously. He began to unpack his few belongings and put them away neatly. He had a picture--an engraving that he had purchased, ready framed, in Melstowe.

It represented David playing before Saul. He hung it over the mantelpiece. Beneath stood a partly-decayed model of a Swiss mountain and chalet, protected by a gla.s.s case.

When everything was tidy Peters sat down and drank his tea, and thought about his ambitions.

Now, Mr Peters, as will have been gathered, was as ignorant as a child of the manner in which promotion takes place in a solicitor's office, and of the fact that he had no chance whatever. He was conscientious and patient, and could do mechanical work; he was quite regular. Some men can do a thing one day which they cannot do on the next, but Peters was never unexpected. He was invariable in his merits, and in his incompetence. With him Nature had drawn a line, and said, "Peters, you are never going beyond that."

His disappointment dawned very slowly upon him. He found that a solicitor's office was not what he had supposed it to be. Neither Grantham nor Flynders was at all by way of being intimate with him; in fact, they rarely spoke to him, except to dictate a letter; it was the managing clerk who told him what to do, and he always did it as well as he could, and that was never very well, nor very badly. Sometimes he thought with regret of the nearly social terms upon which he had been with Flynders's cousin; Flynders's cousin had taken his advice about the lemonade. Now he was not on social terms with anybody. He was not good at making friends. He did not get on very well with the other clerks.

They were not serious; they played practical jokes upon him, which he took, as a rule, with his accustomed mildness; once or twice he lost his temper, and then he was undignified but very funny.

His position was not in any danger. He was careful, methodical, punctual. It was only that his step upwards had been the last step that he was able to take in that direction. He had found his level. In the first few months of his appointment he had purchased a large law-book second hand. He picked that one because it was so very cheap, and it was so very cheap because it was also so very obsolete; but Peters did not know this. He studied his book, without entirely understanding it, by the light of an evil-smelling lamp in the long evenings. When his disappointment had finally dawned upon him, he took the book back to the second-hand bookseller and tried to get him to purchase it again; but that was of no use. It had taken the second-hand man some years to sell that book once, and he did not feel inclined to recommence the struggle.

So Peters put it up on a shelf and did his best to forget it. Now he read Mrs Marks's newspaper (she obliged him with the loan of it) in the evening. On one occasion another clerk lent him something described as a regular spicy novel. Peters read a few pages, but he did not like it, and gave it back.

He began to be sorry that on his first arrival he had been so confidential with his landlady; he had given her a false impression, and he must correct it. So one day he mentioned to her that he had relinquished the notion of a partnership.

"Ah, yes," she said. She had quite forgotten about it, but one must verbally humour lodgers. Besides, she had an apposite observation to make. "I've often remarked," she said, "that if we _could_ all have everything we wanted, there wouldn't be enough to go round."

Peters felt a little lonely. One day was very much like another. He always went to bed at the same time, and always rose at the same time.

His life seemed to be going on by machinery with himself left out of it. He had a fancy that it was the plane tree which woke him in the morning; its boughs touched lightly against his window sometimes when the wind blew. He was rather attached to that tree. In the summer it looked so cool and pleasant. There was a door at the back of the house, leading on to that piece of waste land, and he would have liked to have gone outside and sat under the tree in the hot weather. But he doubted if he had any right to use that back door. He had a right to his two rooms and to the front door and staircase which led to them; but he was doubtful about the back door. On one or two occasions he had inadvertently exceeded his rights, and Mrs Marks had seemed to him rather put out. As a matter of fact, Mrs Marks was very well satisfied with him. He was a good lodger, gave no trouble, and paid his book punctually; he rarely rang, never seemed to mind if the bell was not answered, went to church twice every Sunday, and was a credit to the house. He was an economical man, and was putting by a little money. He had a small sum of his own--20 a year--that his father had left him, or, as he preferred to call it, a certain private income independent of his salary. The days went on; the old tree looked in at his window and seemed interested in him, and he was interested in the tree, noting the way it took the seasons. Otherwise there was nothing, and it was rather lonely.

And then one day Mrs Marks brought him a piece of news. Her little niece, Elsa, was coming to spend a holiday with her. She thought she would mention it, because there were some lodgers who objected to children.

Of course Peters was delighted to say that he did not object to children at all. "Oh, and about that back door, Mrs Marks," he added. "I've sometimes thought I'd like to make use of it, so as to sit out under that tree of a warm evening."

"Most certainly, Mr Peters, and no need to ask either."

Under the plane tree Peters found a thin girl, with a white dress, black stockings, yellow hair, and a large doll. He gazed at her mildly.

"Are you Elsa?"

"Yes. Are you the lodger?"

"Yes." He paused for want of ideas, and added that it was a fine Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

She had much more self-possession than he had. She looked at him critically. "Were you going to sit out here, lodger?"

"I had been thinking of it."

"Well, do it then."

He sat down beside her, and said that she had a nice doll.

"Yes; its name is Mrs Markham. I'm giving her up, because I'm nearly nine, and it's silly to keep on with dolls when you're nearly grown up.

I used to have six dolls, and I've given them all up except Mrs Markham.

She'll have to go too."

"I say, how do you play with dolls?"

"You pretend things. Can you do that?"

"Bless you, yes!" said Peters, cheerfully. "I can pretend anything you like. What shall it be?"

"Let's pretend it's night."

"All right. It's night. And what do you do then?"

"Well, if it's night, of course we must put Mrs Markham to bed. I've got her nightdress in my pocket." She pulled it out and smoothed it on her knee. "Now, I must undress her." But she did not do it; she sat quite still, humming a little tune, while Peters watched her with interest.

"What are you waiting for?" he asked.

"I'm waiting," she said, with some severity, "for you to look the other way. I can't undress Mrs Markham while you're staring at her."

Peters blushed, apologised, and looked the other way. Presently he was told that he might turn round again; Mrs Markham was properly attired, and asleep, with her head supported by part of a brick.

"Capital!" exclaimed Peters.

"Hush!" said Elsa, reproachfully. "It doesn't seem as if you could pretend very well. Mrs Markham's asleep, and so we must speak in whispers. Now, what are you, besides being a lodger?"

"I'm a clerk to a firm of solicitors," Peters replied, in the repressed and husky voice enjoined upon him.

"That all?"

"I'm afraid so. I had expected to be one of the firm, but there are difficulties. It seems to be usual for a solicitor to be articled, and I doubt if the firm will see its way to--"

Elsa yawned and interrupted. "That'll do. This isn't any good. Let's play at something else. Can't you think of _anything_?"

Peters had an idea. He pa.s.sed a small confectioner's shop on his way from business, and he had observed and remembered a label in the window.

"Look here, Elsa, do you think you could manage a liquorice jujube?"

Elsa looked down at the gra.s.s and waggled one foot nervously; her eyes seemed to get larger.

"Yes, thank you," she said demurely, "I think I could."

So they went off to the confectioner's shop. Peters cross-examined the woman behind the counter almost imperiously as to the presence of deleterious mineral colouring matter in the desired sweetmeat. The woman answered him with cold confidence:

"The liquorice jujube takes its colour from the liquorice, which is a vegetable and wholesome."

Then the purchase was made, and they sauntered back--Elsa slowly becoming sticky, and Peters smiling abundantly.