Love and Mr. Lewisham Part 21

"We will not be beaten," said Ethel.

"How could we be beaten--together?" said Lewisham. "For you I would fight a dozen worlds."

It seemed a very sweet and n.o.ble thing to them under the sympathetic moonlight, almost indeed too easy for their courage, to be merely fighting the world.

"You 'aven't bin married ver' long," said Madam Gadow with an insinuating smile, when she readmitted Ethel on Monday morning after Lewisham had been swallowed up by the Schools.

"No, I haven't _very_ long," admitted Ethel.

"You are ver' 'appy," said Madam Gadow, and sighed.

"_I_ was ver' 'appy," said Madam Gadow.

CHAPTER XXIII.

MR. CHAFFERY AT HOME.

The golden mists of delight lifted a little on Monday, when Mr. and Mrs. G.E. Lewisham went to call on his mother-in-law and Mr. Chaffery. Mrs. Lewisham went in evident apprehension, but clouds of glory still hung about Lewisham's head, and his manner was heroic.

He wore a cotton shirt and linen collar, and a very nice black satin tie that Mrs. Lewisham had bought on her own responsibility during the day. She naturally wanted him to look all right.

Mrs. Chaffery appeared in the half light of the pa.s.sage as the top of a grimy cap over Ethel's shoulder and two black sleeves about her neck. She emerged as a small, middle-aged woman, with a thin little nose between silver-rimmed spectacles, a weak mouth and perplexed eyes, a queer little dust-lined woman with the oddest resemblance to Ethel in her face. She was trembling visibly with nervous agitation.

She hesitated, peering, and then kissed Mr. Lewisham effusively. "And this is Mr. Lewisham!" she said as she did so.

She was the third thing feminine to kiss Lewisham since the promiscuous days of his babyhood. "I was so afraid--There!" She laughed hysterically.

"You'll excuse my saying that it's comforting to see you--honest like and young. Not but what Ethel ... _He_ has been something dreadful,"

said Mrs. Chaffery. "You didn't ought to have written about that mesmerising. And of all letters that which Jane wrote--there! But he's waiting and listening--"

"Are we to go downstairs, Mums?" asked Ethel.

"He's waiting for you there," said Mrs. Chaffery. She held a dismal little oil lamp, and they descended a tenebrous spiral structure into an underground breakfast-room lit by gas that shone through a partially frosted globe with cut-gla.s.s stars. That descent had a distinctly depressing effect upon Lewisham. He went first. He took a deep breath at the door. What on earth was Chaffery going to say? Not that he cared, of course.

Chaffery was standing with his back to the fire, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his finger-nails with a pocket-knife. His gilt gla.s.ses were tilted forward so as to make an inflamed k.n.o.b at the top of his long nose, and he regarded Mr. and Mrs. Lewisham over them with--Lewisham doubted his eyes for a moment--but it was positively a smile, an essentially waggish smile.

"You've come back," he said quite cheerfully over Lewisham to Ethel. There was a hint of falsetto in his voice.

"She has called to see her mother," said Lewisham. "You, I believe, are Mr. Chaffery?"

"I would like to know who the Deuce _you_ are?" said Chaffery, suddenly tilting his head back so as to look through his gla.s.ses instead of over them, and laughing genially. "For thoroughgoing Cheek, I'm inclined to think you take the Cake. Are you the Mr. Lewisham to whom this misguided girl refers in her letter?"

"I am."

"Maggie," said Mr. Chaffery to Mrs. Chaffery, "there is a cla.s.s of being upon whom delicacy is lost--to whom delicacy is practically unknown. Has your daughter got her marriage lines?"

"Mr. Chaffery!" said Lewisham, and Mrs. Chaffery exclaimed, "James!

How _can_ you?"

Chaffery shut his penknife with a click and slipped it into his vest-pocket. Then he looked up again, speaking in the same equal voice. "I presume we are civilised persons prepared to manage our affairs in a civilised way. My stepdaughter vanishes for two nights and returns with an alleged husband. I at least am not disposed to be careless about her legal position."

"You ought to know her better--" began Lewisham.

"Why argue about it," said Chaffery gaily, pointing a lean finger at Ethel's gesture, "when she has 'em in her pocket? She may just as well show me now. I thought so. Don't be alarmed at my handling them.

Fresh copies can always be got at the nominal price of two-and-seven.

Thank you ... Lewisham, George Edgar. One-and-twenty. And ...

You--one-and-twenty! I never did know your age, my dear, exactly, and now your mother won't say. Student! Thank you. I am greatly obliged. Indeed I am greatly relieved. And now, what have you got to say for yourselves in this remarkable affair?"

"You had a letter," said Lewisham.

"I had a letter of excuses--the personalities I overlook ... Yes, sir--they were excuses. You young people wanted to marry--and you seized an occasion. You did not even refer to the fact that you wanted to marry in your letter. Pure modesty! But now you have come here married. It disorganises this household, it inflicts endless bother on people, but never you mind that! I'm not blaming _you_. Nature's to blame! Neither of you know what you are in for yet. You will. You're married, and that is the great essential thing.... (Ethel, my dear, just put your husband's hat and stick behind the door.) And you, sir, are so good as to disapprove of the way in which I earn my living?"

"Well," said Lewisham. "Yes--I'm bound to say I do."

"You are really _not_ bound to say it. The modesty of inexperience would excuse you."

"Yes, but it isn't right--it isn't straight."

"Dogma," said Chaffery. "Dogma!"

"What do you mean by dogma?" asked Lewisham.

"I mean, dogma. But we must argue this out in comfort. It is our supper hour, and I'm not the man to fight against accomplished facts. We have intermarried. There it is. You must stop to supper--and you and I must thresh these things out. We've involved ourselves with each other and we've got to make the best of it. Your wife and mine will spread the board, and we will go on talking. Why not sit in that chair instead of leaning on the back? This is a home--_domus_--not a debating society--humble in spite of my manifest frauds.... That's better. And in the first place I hope--I do so hope"--Chaffery was suddenly very impressive--"that you're not a Dissenter."

"Eh!" said Lewisham, and then, "No! I am _not_ a Dissenter."

"That's better," said Mr. Chaffery. "I'm glad of that. I was just a little afraid--Something in your manner. I can't stand Dissenters.

I've a peculiar dislike to Dissenters. To my mind it's the great drawback of this Clapham. You see ... I have invariably found them deceitful--invariably."

He grimaced and dropped his gla.s.ses with a click against his waistcoat b.u.t.tons. "I'm very glad of that," he said, replacing them. "The Dissenter, the Nonconformist Conscience, the Puritan, you know, the Vegetarian and Total Abstainer, and all that sort of thing, I cannot away with them. I have cleared my mind of cant and formulae. I've a nature essentially h.e.l.lenic. Have you ever read Matthew Arnold?"

"Beyond my scientific reading--"

"Ah! you _should_ read Matthew Arnold--a mind of singular clarity. In him you would find a certain quality that is sometimes a little wanting in your scientific men. They are apt to be a little too phenomenal, you know, a little too objective. Now I seek after noumena. Noumena, Mr. Lewisham! If you follow me--?"

He paused, and his eyes behind the gla.s.ses were mildly interrogative. Ethel re-entered without her hat and jacket, and with a noisy square black tray, a white cloth, some plates and knives and gla.s.ses, and began to lay the table.

"_I_ follow you," said Lewisham, reddening. He had not the courage to admit ignorance of this remarkable word. "You state your case."

"I seek after _noumena_," repeated Chaffery with great satisfaction, and gesticulated with his hand, waving away everything but that. "I cannot do with surfaces and appearances. I am one of those nympholepts, you know, nympholepts ... Must pursue the truth of things! the elusive fundamental ... I make a rule, I never tell myself lies--never. There are few who can say that. To my mind--truth begins at home. And for the most part--stops there. Safest and seemliest!

_you_ know. With most men--with your typical Dissenter _par excellence_--it's always gadding abroad, calling on the neighbours.

You see my point of view?"