The Record of Nicholas Freydon Part 22

And just then--we were in the narrow ground floor pa.s.sage--the mother arrived, bringing with her an unmistakable whiff of a public-house bar. This stiffened my relaxing prudence considerably. I had no kindly feeling left for taverns, especially where women were concerned. But, by an odd chance, it happened that Mrs. Pelly was not only in a talkative mood, but also in higher spirits than I ever saw her afterwards. She insisted on reinspection of the room, a sufficiently dangerous thing in itself for me. And then, standing beside its open window, with arms folded over the place in which her waist once had been, she avowed that she thought the room would suit me, and that I should suit the room.

'There's a writing-table in it, an' all, ye see,' she said, having received a hint as to my working habits.

There was indeed. I was little likely to forget it. It now seemed the charge for the room was eleven shillings weekly, without 'attendance.'

But Mrs. Pelly had never been a woman to stick out over trifles, that she hadn't; and, right or wrong, though she hoped she might never live to rue the day, she would let the gentleman this room for nine shillings a week, and include 'attendance' in that merely nominal rate--'So there, Miss!' This, to her daughter f.a.n.n.y, and in apparent forgetfulness of my presence.

It was a thrilling moment for me, standing there with one hand on the writing-table, my gaze fixed over the scantily covered top of Mrs.

Pelly's head--she wore no hat--upon the trees in the distance.

Prudence gabbled at me: 'You can't afford it. You must eat. You'll be sold up, and serve you right.' But, of course, the table and the window won. After all, had I not earned five pounds in the past month?

And, excepting boots, my outfit was still pretty good!

I could not wait for Monday. The window and the table pulled too hard.

So I installed myself at No. 37 on the Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and thanked G.o.d sincerely that I was no longer in a slum.

VII

On fine mornings I used to leave door and window blocked open in my room, and take half an hour's walk in the park before breakfast. The weather was sometimes unkind, of course, but f.a.n.n.y never, and she would neglect the rooms of other lodgers in order to hasten the straightening of mine. The other lodgers were all folk whose business took them away from Howard Street as soon as breakfast was dispatched, and kept them away till evening.

It often happened that I would work at my little writing-table until the small hours of the morning; and in such cases, more often than not, I would leave the house directly after breakfast, walk down Tottenham Court Road, and tack through Bloomsbury to Gray's Inn and Fleet Street, or wherever else the office might lie for which the ma.n.u.script I carried was destined. Where possible, I preferred this method of disposing of ma.n.u.scripts. Not only did it save stamps--a considerable item with me--but it seemed quicker and safer than the post. I had a dishonest little formula for porters and bell boys in these offices, from the enunciation of which I derived a comforting sense of security and dispatch.

'You might let the editor have this directly he comes in,' I would say as I handed over my envelope; 'promised for to-day, without fail.'

Well, I had promised--myself. And this little formula, in addition to making for prompt delivery, I thought, gave one a sense of actual relationship with the editor. Save for the trifling fact that the ma.n.u.script would, probably, in due course be returned, or even consigned to the waste-paper basket, my method seemed to put me on the footing of one who had written a commissioned article. The dramatic value of the formula was greatly enhanced where one happened to know the editor's name, and could say in a tone of urgent intimacy: 'You might let Mr. ---- have this directly he comes in,' etc. In those cases one walked down the office stairway humming an air. It was next door to being one of the Olympians, and that without sacrificing one's romantic liberty as a free-lance.

As my earnings rose--and they did rise with agreeable rapidity after my establishment in Howard Street--I wrote less and thought more. I also walked more, and saw more of London, But I was still writing a great deal; more probably than any salaried journalist in the town, though a large proportion of my writings never saw the light of print.

When I had been living for five or six months in Howard Street, my earnings were averaging from ten pounds to fifteen pounds each month.

For a long time I seemed able to maintain something like this average, but not to improve upon it. It may be that my efforts slackened at that point, and that I gave more time to reading and walking. This is the more likely, because I know I felt no interest whatever in the progress of the account I opened in the Post Office savings bank.

It was about this time, I fancy, though only in my twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year, that I began seeking advice from chemists and their a.s.sistants, under whose guidance I tapped the fascinating but deadly field of patent medicines. The fact was I had completely disorganised my digestive system during two years and more of catering for myself upon an average outlay of six or seven shillings weekly (sometimes much less, of course), whilst living an insanely sedentary life in which the allowance of sleep, exercise, and fresh air had been as inadequate as my dietary. A wise physician might possibly have been able to steer me into smooth waters now, especially if he had driven me out of London. But the obstinate energy and conceit of youth was still strong in my veins. I had no money to waste on doctors, I told myself. And so I held desultory consultations across the counters of chemist's shops, and, supremely ignorant as to causes, attacked symptoms with trustful energy, consuming great quant.i.ties of mostly valueless and frequently harmful nostrums.

Another step I took at this time, after quaintly earnest discussion with f.a.n.n.y, was to arrange an additional payment of eight shillings a week to Mrs. Pelly, in return for the provision of my very simple breakfast and a bread and cheese luncheon each day. This relieved me of a task for which I had never had much patience, and very likely it was also an economy. My evening meal I preferred, as a general thing, to obtain elsewhere. It was one of my few entertainments this foraging after inexpensive dinners, and watching and listening to other diners.

At that time my prejudices were the exact ant.i.thesis of those that came later on, and I preferred foreign restaurants and foreign service and cooking, quite apart from the fact that I found them nearly always cheaper and more entertaining than the native varieties.

It was in a dingy little French eating-house near Wardour Street (where I must say the cooking at that time really was skilful, though I dare say the material used was villainously bad, since the prices charged were low, even judged by my scale in such matters) that I first made the acquaintance of Sidney Heron. I felt sure that Heron must be a remarkable man, even before I spoke to him, or heard him speak, for he lived with a monocle fixed in his right eye, and never moved it, even when he blew his nose and gesticulated violently, as he so often did. The monocle was attached to a broad black ribbon which, in some way, seemed grotesque as contrasted with the dingy greyish-white flannel cricketing shirts which Heron always wore, with a red tie under the collar. Linen in any guise he clearly scorned. I do not think his boots were ever cleaned, and he appeared to spend even less upon clothing than I did. I do not know just how he disposed of his money, but he earned two hundred or three hundred a year as a writer, and he was invariably short of funds. I think it quite conceivable that he may have maintained some poor relation or relations, but in all the years of our acquaintance I never heard him mention a relative. He certainly lived poorly himself.

Our acquaintance resulted from his tipping a rum omelette into my lap.

The tables at this little restaurant were exceptionally narrow, and I suppose Heron was exceptionally cross, even for him. The omelette was burnt, he said, and after pishing and tushing over it for a moment or two he shouted to the overworked waiter, giving his plate so angry a thrust at the same time that it collided violently with mine, and the offending omelette ricochetted into my lap.

Heron's apologies indicated far more of anger than contrition, I thought; but they led to conversation, at all events, and as he lived in the Hampstead Road we walked a mile or more together after leaving the restaurant. It was the beginning of companionship of a sort for me, and if we did not ever become very close friends, at all events our intimacy endured without rupture for many years.

At the outset I was given an inkling of the irascibility of his temper, and my subsequent method, in all our intercourse, was simply to leave him whenever he became quarrelsome, and to take up our relations when next we met at the point immediately preceding that at which temper had overcome him. At heart an honourable and I am sure kindly man, Heron had a temper of remarkable susceptibility to irritation. The stomachic causes which, as time went on, produced melancholy and dense, black depression in me, probably accounted for his eruptions of violent irascibility. And I fancy we were equally ignorant and brutal in our treatment of our own physical weaknesses.

Heron certainly became one of my distractions, one of my human interests outside work, at this time. But there was another, and the other came closer home to me.

I suppose I spent seven or eight months in discovering that Mrs. Pelly was a singularly unpleasant woman. But the thing did eventually become plain to me, so plain indeed that it would have caused me to give up my French window and writing-table and migrate once more, but for certain considerations outside my own personal comfort. That Mrs.

Pelly consumed far more gin than was good for her became apparent to me during my first week, if not my first day, in Howard Street. But as she rarely entered my room, and our encounters were merely accidental and momentary, this weakness would never have affected me much.

What did affect me was my very gradual discovery of the fact that this woman treated her own daughter with systematic cruelty--a thing happily unusual in her cla.s.s, as it is also, I think, among the very poor of London. At the end of eight or nine months my increasing knowledge of Mrs. Pelly's harsh unkindness to f.a.n.n.y had begun to weigh on my mind a good deal. It was a singular case, in many ways. Here was a girl, a young woman rather, in her twenty-first year, who to all intents and purposes might be said to be carrying on with her own hands the entire work of a house which sheltered five lodgers; and, as a fact, it was rarely that a day pa.s.sed without her suffering actual physical violence at the hands of that gin-soaked termagant, her mother.

The woman positively used to pinch f.a.n.n.y in such a way as to leave blue bruises on her arm. She used to pull her hair violently, slap her face, and strike at her with any sort of weapon that happened to be within reach. Further, when the vicious fit took her, she would lock up pantry and kitchen, and make this hard-working girl go hungry to bed at night, by way of punishment for some pretended misdeed. And the astounding thing was that, with all this and more, f.a.n.n.y retained a very real affection for her unnatural parent; and used to plead that, but for the effect of liquor upon her, Mrs. Pelly would be and was a good mother.

It appeared that f.a.n.n.y had lost her father when she was about twelve years old, and ever since that time her mother's extraordinary att.i.tude towards her had become increasingly harsh and cruel. She never had a penny of her own, though she did the work of two servants, and her clothes were mostly home-made make-shifts from discarded garments of her mother's. When necessity caused her to ask for new boots, for example, the penalty would be perhaps a week of vile abuse and bullying, of slaps, pinches, docked meals and other humiliations, all of which must be endured before the wretched woman would buy a pair of the cheapest and ugliest shoes obtainable, and fling them to her daughter from out her market-basket. If they were a misfit, f.a.n.n.y would have to suffer them as best she could. Or, in other cases, new shoes would be refused altogether, and she would be ordered to make shift with a pair her mother had worn out.

It was only very gradually that I came to know these things. Once, when I knew no more than that f.a.n.n.y worked very hard and seldom stirred out of the house, I chanced to encounter mother and daughter together on the stairs early on a Sunday evening. The girl looked pinched and unhappy, and something moved me to make a suggestion I should hardly have ventured upon then, if the mother had not happened to be present.

'You look tired, f.a.n.n.y,' I said. 'Why not come out for a walk in the park with me? The air would do you good, and perhaps you will have a bit of dinner somewhere with me before getting back. Do! It would be quite a charity to a lonely man.'

I saw her tired brown eyes brighten at the thought, and then she turned timidly in Mrs. Pelly's direction.

'Oh!' said I, on a rather happy inspiration, 'I believe you're one of the vain people who fancy they are indispensable. I am sure Mrs. Pelly would be delighted for you to come; wouldn't you, Mrs. Pelly? There will be no lodgers home till late this fine evening.'

Mrs. Pelly simpered at me, with a rather forbidding light in her eye, I thought. But I had struck the right note in that word 'indispensable.'

'Oh, she's very welcome to go, for me, Mr. Freydon; and I'm sure it's very kind of you to ask her. Girls nowadays don't do so much when they are at work but what it's easy enough to spare 'em. But, haven't you got a tongue, miss? Why don't you thank Mr. Freydon?'

'No, indeed,' I laughed. 'The thanks are coming from me. I'll just go back to my room and write a letter, and you will let me know as soon as you're ready, won't you, f.a.n.n.y?'

Well, I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed that little outing.

I thought there never had been any one who was so easily pleased and entertained. Doubtless her worshipful att.i.tude flattered my youthful vanity. But, apart from this, it was a real delight to see the flush of enjoyment come and go in her pale, pretty face, when we rode on the top of an omnibus, examined flowers in the park, and sat down to a meal with the preparation and removal of which she was to have no concern whatever. It was a pretty and touching sight, I say, to see how these very simple pleasures delighted her. But I very soon learned that this experience must not be repeated. Indeed, it was in this wise that I obtained my first inklings of the real wretchedness of f.a.n.n.y's life. She had to suffer constant humiliations for a week or more, as the price of the little jaunt she had with me. Her mother found it hard to forget or forgive the fact that her daughter had had an hour or two of freedom and enjoyment. Realisation of this made me detest the woman.

And then, it may have been three months after this little outing, there came another Sunday incident that moved me. I returned to my room unexpectedly about six o'clock, having forgotten to take out with me a certain paper. The house was very silent, and perhaps that made me walk more softly than usual up the stairs. As I opened my door the warm, yellow light of the setting sun was slanting across my writing-table, and in the chair before it sat f.a.n.n.y, reading a magazine.

My first thought was of irritation. I did not like to see any one sitting at my writing-table. I was touchy regarding that one spot--the table, my papers, and so forth. In the same instant irritation gave place to some quite other feeling, as the sunlight showed me that tears were rolling down f.a.n.n.y's pale face.

She sprang to her feet in great confusion, murmuring almost pa.s.sionate apologies in her habitually soft, small voice.

'Oh, please forgive me, Mr. Freydon! I know it was a liberty. Please do forgive me. I will never do it again. Please say you will overlook it, and--and not tell my mother.'

She unmistakably shrank, trembling, almost cowering before me, so that I was made to feel a dreadful brute.

'My dear f.a.n.n.y,' I said, touching her arm with my fingers, 'there's nothing to forgive. How absurd! I hope you will always sit there whenever you like. As though I should mind! But what were you reading?'

The question had no point for me, and was designed merely to relieve the tension.

'Oh, your story, Mr. Freydon. It's--it's too beautiful. That was what made me forget where I was, and sit on here. I just glanced at it--like; and then--and I couldn't leave it. Oh!'

And she drew up her ap.r.o.n and dabbed her eyes. I don't believe the poor soul possessed a handkerchief. Here was a pretty pa.s.s then! I had forgotten for the moment that one of the three magazines on the table contained a short story of which, upon its appearance, I had been inordinately proud. I was young, and no one else flattered me.

Literally n.o.body had shared my gratification in the publication of this story. Here was somebody from whom it drew indubitable tears; some one who was deeply moved by its beauty....

I patted her shoulder. I drew confidences from her regarding the wretchedness of her home life. I laid down emphatic instructions that she was to regard my room as her sanctuary; to use it whenever and howsoever she might choose, irrespective of my presence or absence. I bade her make free with my few books--as though the poor soul had abundance of leisure--comforted her to the best of my ability; and-- Yes, let me evade nothing. I stroked her hair, and in leaving her, with reiterated instructions to remain there and rest, I touched her cool white cheek with my lips, and was strangely thrilled by the touch.

A warm wave of what I thought pity and sympathy pa.s.sed over me as I walked from her.

VIII