Poor Relations Part 28

It was pleasant walking by the river on that fine afternoon, and John felt as he strode along Grosvenor Road, his spirit rising with the eager tide, that after all there was nothing like the sea, nothing!

"As soon as I've finished Joan of Arc, I shall take a sea-voyage. It's all very well for George to talk about sea-voyages, but let him do some work first. Even if I do send him for a sea-voyage, how will he spend his time? I know perfectly well. He'll feel seasick for the first week and play poker for the rest of the pa.s.sage. No, no, after the Christmas holidays at Ambles he'll be as right as a trivet without a sea-voyage.

What is a trivet by the way? Now if I had a secretary, I should make a note of a query like that. As it is, I shall probably never know what a trivet is; but if I had a secretary, I should ask her to look it up in the dictionary when we got home. I dare say I've lost thousands of ideas by not having a secretary at hand. I shall have to advertise--or find out in some way about a secretary. Thank heaven, neither Hilda nor Beatrice nor Eleanor nor Edith knows shorthand. But even if Edith did know shorthand, she'd be eternally occupied with the dactylography--as I suppose _he'd_ call it--of Laurence's apostolic successes--there's another note I might make. Of course, it's nothing wonderful as a piece of wit, but I might get an epigram worth keeping, say three times a week, if I had a secretary at my elbow. I don't believe that Stephen will make any difficulties about Hugh. Oh no, I don't think so. I was tired this morning after yesterday. This walk is making me see events in their right proportion. Rosification indeed! James brings out these things as if he were a second Sydney Smith; but in my opinion wit without humor is like marmalade without b.u.t.ter. And even if I do rosify things, well, what is it that Lady Teazle says? _I wish it were spring all the year round and that roses grew under our feet._ And it takes something to rosify such moral anemia as Hugh's. By the way I wonder just exactly whereabouts in Chelsea Camera Square is."

Now if there was one thing that John hated, if there was one thing that dragged even his buoyant spirits into the dust, if there was one thing worse than having a forger for a blood-relation, it was to be compelled to ask his way anywhere in London within the four miles radius. He would not even now admit to himself more than that he did not know the _exact_ whereabouts of Camera Square. Although he really had not the remotest idea beyond its location in the extensive borough of Chelsea where Camera Square was, he wasted half-an-hour in dancing a kind of Ladies'

Chain with all the side-streets off King's Road and never catching a glimpse of his destination. It was at last borne in upon him that if he wanted to call on Mrs. Hamilton at a respectable hour for afternoon tea he should simply have to ask his way.

Now arose for John the problem of choosing the oracle. He walked on and on, half making up his mind every moment to accost somebody and when he was on the point of doing so perceiving in his expression a latent haughtiness that held him back until it was too late. Had it not been Sunday, he would have entered a shop and bought sufficiently expensive to bribe the shopman from looking astonished at his ignorance.

Presently, however, he pa.s.sed a tobacconist's, and having bought three of the best cigars he had, which were not very good, he asked casually as he was going out the direction of Camera Square. The shopman did not know. He came to another tobacconist's, bought three more cigars, and that shopman did not know either. Gradually with a sharp sense of impending disgrace John realized that he must ask a policeman. He turned aside from the many inviting policemen in the main road, where the contemptuous glances of wayfarers might presume his rusticity, and tried to find a policeman in a secluded by-street. This took another half-an-hour, and when John did accost this ponderous hermit of the force he accosted him in broken English.

"Ees thees ze vay to Cahmehra Squah?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders in what he conceived to be the gesture of a Frenchman who had landed that morning from Calais.

"Eh?"

"Cahmehra Squah?" John repeated.

The policeman put his hand in his pocket, and John thought he was going to whistle for help; but it was really to get out a handkerchief to blow his nose and give him time to guess what John wanted to know.

"Say it again, will yer?" the policeman requested.

John repeated his Gallic rendering of Camera.

"I ain't seen it round here. Where do you say you dropped it?"

"Eet ees a place I vants."

What slow-witted oafs the English were, thought John with a compa.s.sionate sigh for the poor foreigners who must be lost in London every day. However, this policeman was so loutish that he felt he could risk an almost perfect p.r.o.nunciation.

"Oh, Kemmerer Squer," said the policeman with a huge smile of comprehension. "Why, you're looking at it." He pointed along the road.

"d.a.m.n," thought John. "I needn't have asked at all. Sank you.

Good-evening," he said aloud.

"The same to you and many of them, Napoleon," the policeman nodded.

John hurried away, and soon he was walking along a narrow garden, very unlike a London garden, for it was full of frost-bitten herbaceous flowers and smelt of the country. Not a house on this side of the square resembled its neighbor; but Number 83 was the most charmingly odd of all, two stories high with a little Chinese balcony and jasmine over a queer pointed porch of wrought iron.

"Yes, sir, Mrs. Hamilton is at home," said the maid.

The last bars of something by Schumann or Chopin died away; in the comparative stillness that succeeded John could hear a canary singing, and the tinkle of tea-cups; there was also a smell of m.u.f.fins and--mimosa, was it? Anyway it was very delicious, he thought, while he made his overcoat as small as possible, so as not to fill the tiny hall entirely.

"Mr. Touchwood was the name?" the maid asked.

"What an intelligent young woman," he thought. "How much more intelligent than that policeman. But women are more intelligent in small things."

John felt very large as he bowed his head to enter the drawing-room.

CHAPTER IX

A sudden apprehension of his bulk (though he was only comparatively ma.s.sive) overcame John when he stood inside the tiny drawing-room of 83 Camera Square; and it was not until the steam from the tea-pot had materialized into Miss Hamilton, who in a dress of filmy gray floated round him as a cloud swathes a mountain, that he felt at ease.

"Why, how charming of you to keep your word," her well-remembered voice, so soft and deep, was murmuring. "You don't know my mother, do you?

Mother, this is Mr. Touchwood, who was so kind to Ida and me on the voyage back from America."

Mrs. Hamilton was one of those mothers that never destroy the prospects of their children by testifying outwardly to what their beauty may one day come: neither in face nor in expression nor in gesture nor in voice did she bear the least resemblance to her daughter. At first John was inclined to compare her to a diminutive clown; but presently he caught sight of some golden mandarins marching across a lacquer cupboard and decided that she resembled a mandarin; after which wherever he looked in the room he seemed to catch sight of her miniature--on the willow-pattern plates, on the mantelpiece in porcelain, and even on the red lacquer bridge that spanned the tea-caddy.

"We've all heard of Mr. Touchwood," she said, picking up a small silver weapon in the shape of a pea-shooter and puffing out her already plump cheeks in a vain effort to extinguish the flame of the spirit-lamp. "And I'm devoted to the drama. Pouf! I think this is a very dull instrument, dear. What would England be without Shakespeare? Pouf! Pouf! One blows and blows and blows and blows till really--well, it has taught me never to regret that I did not learn the flute when there was a question of my having lessons. Pouf! Pouf!"

John offered his services as extinguisher.

"You have to blow very hard," she warned him; and he being determined at all costs to impress Miss Hamilton blew like a knight-errant at the gate of an enchanted castle. It was almost too vigorous a blast: besides extinguishing the flame, it blew several currants from the cake into Mrs. Hamilton's lap, which John in an access of good-will tried to blow off again less successfully.

"Bravo," the old lady exclaimed, clapping her hands. "I'm glad to see that it can be done. But didn't you write _The Walls of Jericho_? Ah no, I'm thinking of Joshua and his trumpet."

"_The Fall of Babylon_, mother," Miss Hamilton put in with a smile, in the curves of which quivered a hint of scornfulness.

"Then I was not so far out. _The Fall of Babylon_ to be sure. Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen."

She beamed at the author encouragingly, who beamed responsively back at her; presently she began to chuckle to herself, and John, hoping that in his wish to be pleasant to Miss Hamilton's mother he was not appearing to be imitating a hen, chuckled back.

"I'm glad you have a sense of humor," she exclaimed, suddenly a.s.suming an intensely serious expression and throwing up her eyebrows like two skipping-ropes.

John, who felt as if he was playing a game, copied her expression as well as he was able.

"I live on it," she pursued. "And thrive moreover. A small income and an ample sense of humor. Yes, for thus one avoids extravagance oneself, but enjoys it in other people."

"And how is Miss Merritt?" John inquired of Miss Hamilton, when he had bowed his appreciation of the witticism. But before she could reply, her mother rattled on: "Miss Merritt will not take Doris to America again.

Miss Merritt has written a book called _The Aphorisms of Aphrodite_."

The old lady's remarkable eyebrows were darting about her forehead like forked lightning while she spoke.

"The Aphorisms of Aphrodite!" she repeated. "A collection of some of the most decla.s.sical observations that I have ever encountered." Like a diver's arms the eyebrows drew themselves together for a plunge into unfathomable moral depths.

"My dear mother, lots of people found it very amusing," her daughter protested.

"Miss Merritt," the old lady a.s.serted, "was meant for bookkeeping by double-entry, instead of which she had taken to book-writing by double-entente. The profits may be treble, but the method is base. How did she affect you, Mr. Touchwood?"

"She frightened me," John confessed. "I thought her manner somewhat severe."

"You hear that, Doris? Her ethical exterior frightened him."

"You're both very unfair to Ida. I only wish I had half her talents."

"Wrapped in a napkin," said the old lady, "you have your shorthand."