Mord Em'ly/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
When, the next morning, a note arrived from Miss Gilliken announcing that the end had come, it was fortunate for Mord Em'ly that she had near her so excellent a woman as the proprietress of the dining-rooms. The imminence of a funeral gave to Mrs. Mitchell such enjoyment that those about her could not avoid being affected by it; she entered into the details of what she called Mord Em'ly's Blackwith a zest and relish that could not have been exceeded if a wedding trousseau had been in question.
"My motto at times like this," said Mrs. Mitchell confidentially, behind the bulwark of dishes, to which she had invited the red-eyed Mord Em'ly, "My motto has always been, 'No stint!' People may talk about wasting money on plooms, and what not, but it looks to me very much like flying in the face of Providence if you don't do it well."
"Poor mother arranged it all before she—"
"That's a pity," said Mrs. Mitchell judiciously. "I don't think it's wise for the living to be tied down in affairs of this kind. What day does your friend say she's arranged for? Next Sunday? Well, that gives you nice time to look about you. As regards your hat, I should recommend that shop on the right-'and as you go down High Street, Deptford; your dress, my dear, I'll look after."
"You're good to take all this trouble."
"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Mitchell, her round face shining. "No trouble at all. It's what I call," here Mrs. Mitchell laughed outright, "a melancholy pleasure."
Mrs. Mitchell's daughter took a less acute interest in the matter, being, as a fact, not altogether unencumbered with interests of her own. Her young gentleman friend had orders for the play, for the upper boxes of a singularly unsuccessful theatre, where sale of programmes afforded the principal source of revenue, and the momentous questions with which Miss Mitchell was engaged in wrestling were these: Evening dress, semi-evening dress, or ordinary dress? White gloves, black gloves, or brown? Spray of flowers, a rose for the hair, or no flowers at all? To go by cab, to go by tram, or to go by train? Slippers, shoes, or boots? Miss Mitchell, tormented by the variety of courses open to her, said, with a good deal of bitterness, that it was enough to give a saint the headache, and that small wonder people told her she was beginning to look old.
Henry Barden came to the dining-rooms, with a more serious face than usual, on Thursday afternoon. He ordered quite a long dinner, which, even at Mitchell's economic figures, came to as much as one-and-eightpence, but, although the beef was carefully underdone, and other dishes in accord with his usual taste, he did not eat of them. Instead, he watched Mord Em'ly wherever she went; his eyes followed her down to the back of the dining-rooms, where she hurried to speak sharply to the cook; followed her when she went to fix the street doors open, in order that some of the heavy air of Mitchell's might be exchanged for the fresh and rare atmosphere without. The regular tramp of mules attached to the tram-cars, the rattle of other traffic, the indignant whistling by tram-car drivers when the other traffic dared to intrude upon their lines—all these came into Mitchell's with the fresh air, and made the customers, as they talked to each other, raise their voices to a higher pitch. As Mord Em'ly stood at the open doorway, looking thoughtfully at the street, Miss Mitchell came to the pew where Henry Barden was seated, with a view to rallying him upon his absorbed appearance.
"Off your feed somewhat, aren't you?" asked Miss Mitchell. "Unusual with you."
"Got too much to think of," replied Mr. Barden, with solemnity, "To pay much attention to me food."
"Oh, don't talk about having too much to think of," begged Miss Mitchell hysterically. "Look at me! Why, I'm worried out of me life about Friday evening. You must know that—"
"Interrupting you," he said confidentially, "does she carry on much about her mother?"
"Well," said Miss Mitchell, "she is a good deal upset over it. It's only natural she should be. But, as I tell her, she isn't the only one that's got worries. Do you think I slept last night?"
"How should I know?" demanded Henry Barden impatiently.
"Not a wink," declared Miss Mitchell, with triumph; "not so much as a single wink!"
"Wonder whether she'd care for a sea voyage?" said Mr. Barden.
"Meaning Southend?"
"Southend? No. A real sea voyage. A long way."
"That I couldn't say," replied Miss Mitchell loftily. "She must answer for herself. For my part, I'm an awfully good sailor. I'm ill, mind you, I admit that—ill nearly all the time, but all the same—"
"I'm afraid she's a bit fond of London," said Henry Barden thoughtfully.
"It's so silly of her. Me, I'm all the other way now. Give me the country. Give me a farm-house, and a glass of milk, and a meadow, and a pond, and a orchard, and what not, and"—Miss Mitchell sighed—"I should be as 'appy as the days are long. With plenty of lively company, of course."
"Has she ever spoke about going abroad? What I mean is, has she ever mentioned it in a casual way?"
"Can't say she has. But, if it was my case, I should simply glory in it. I shouldn't care where it was neither. Anything'd be better than this stuffy atmosphere, and nobody to talk to but a lot of your inferiors."
"Do you mind doing me a favour, miss? Do you mind—if you get a chance to-day—cracking up foreign places as much as possible? Do you mind mentioning, in a off'and way, that you've 'eard Australia spoke of as a good deal like South London, only better? Pr'aps you might add a word or two in favour of a sea voyage, too, as being the very thing to pull you round when you're a bit run down. If you can do all this, without mentioning my name, there's a bracelet marked at seven-and-six in the jeweller's window not six shops off, and I'll ask him to send it down to you, with my compliments."
This was a long speech, almost a lecture, from Mr. Barden, and it seemed to exhaust his powers of conversation, for he sat back and looked at the ceiling. Miss Mitchell promised to do as he wished, and mentioned that a bracelet at seven-and-six was just what she had always set her heart upon, and that it would distinctly tend to clear up the Friday evening perplexity. Miss Mitchell went to help a customer, who was in difficulties with the lining of his overcoat, and Mr. Barden summoned Mord Em'ly with a jerk of his head.
"Don't talk about it," said Mord Em'ly, in a low voice. "I don't want them to know about father."
"Wasn't going to say nothing about him. Want to talk about something a lot more urgent."
"I'm so afraid he'll come round 'ere," she said nervously, "and kick up—"
"Put a copper on him if he does. Can you spare five minutes, Mord Em'ly?"
"I'll put me hat on and come out with you."
They walked to New Cross gates, without saying a word, and turned there to go up Pepy's Hill. Mord Em'ly, in her white pinafore, held her hat with one hand; the disengaged arm was taken rather shyly by Henry Barden. The young man hummed a little under his breath, and ventured to press the arm which he held.
"Don't," said Mord Em'ly; "people'll take notice."
"D'ye like me, Mord Em'ly?"
She looked at him with so much surprise that he blushed fiercely.
"Course I like you," she said. "What a question to ask!"
"Because—"
"If I didn't like you, should I 'ave sent for you the other evening to come and watch after father? If I didn't like you, should I come out like this, and walk up this hill with you?"
"So far, so good," said Henry Barden. "Do you like anybody better than me?"
"I can't say I do."
"Is anybody else fond of you?"
"Well," said Mord Em'ly frankly, "There's a young man pretends to be—name Wetherell. I think you saw him once."
"Once was plenty. Do you care for him?"
"Not partic'lar," said Mord Em'ly. "Same time, he's always very amiable and talkative."
"Ah!" sighed Henry Barden. "Wish t' 'Eaven I'd got the gift of the gab."
"What makes you ask all these questions?"
"For a partic'lar reason," he said stolidly. "Stand still 'ere a moment, and I'll tell you. In the first place, I'm going to Australia on Friday."
"Of this week, 'Enery?"
"Of this very week."
"Oh!"
Henry Barden waited for the next question with something of the defensive air of one in the witness-box.
"Shall you—shall you be away long, 'Enery?"
"Years and years, Mord Em'ly."
"Got a berth out there?"
"A berth, or a post, or a situation," acknowledged Mr. Barden, with a manifest desire not to commit perjury, "has been found for me there by the Australian toff to which I 'ave previously referred. It's a chance of a lifetime, and one that it won't do for me to miss."
"No! Oh, no! I spose not."
She looked rather wistfully down at the houses below them. It seemed to her that the world was shrinking oddly, that the number of people for whom she cared was being lessened very consider ably. From the height on which they were standing, she could see miles of South London; the big, bloated gasometer, slim spires of churches, a few engines puffing their way along, sending up clouds of white smoke; she had but to glance round to see the two high towers and the glisten ing glass roof of the Crystal Palace. As she looked out over the space, she tried to count her friends. The number seemed small.
"It's a good thing for me, I spose," said Henry Barden. "Jolly sight better than anything I could do 'ere. Moreover, it's what I've always rather set me 'eart on."
"Long way off, isn't it?"
"It's a tidy distance, certainly. But, bless my soul, what's distance?"
Mord Em'ly had no reply to this question.
"Distance means nothing when you come to think of it," argued Henry Barden. "If you're away from a certain place, you're away from it, and if it's one mile, or if it's a thousand miles, it don't make no difference. Besides, you'd soon get to know people, bless you. You'd soon pick up new friends."
"I sha'n't 'ave a friend left soon," she said, with a catch in her voice, "if it goes on like this. Anybody going with you?"
"Yes," he said, admitting it reluctantly. "My new guv'nor."
"Nobody else?"
"Yes!" with a burst of openness, discarding his witness-box manner. "There is someone else. There's you, Mord Em'ly. You're coming with me."
"On Friday of this week?" Mord Em'ly laughed bitterly. "Oh, yes. No doubt."
"My guv'nor's willing to take two passages for me, Mord Em'ly, on condition I can persuade you to come out there with me. You'll be in one part of the ship, and I shall be in the other. When we get there, the first thing we do is to go to a church and get married. I'm straight, mind you."
"I know that."
"Well, then," he said, with great relief, "we'll consider it settled. I was a bit nervous lest—"
"You forget one thing," said Mord Em'ly. "I could no more go this week than I could fly. Why, Friday's to-morrow."
"What of it?"
"And poor mother won't be put away till Sunday."
"Leave that to Gilliken. She'll see all about that. You can't do no good by—"
"I promised her I'd see it all done," said Mord Em'ly resolutely and definitely, "and I wouldn't break my promise to her for forty thousand pound."
"Onfortunately," remarked Henry Barden grimly, "I ain't got so much about me. But I can give you till eight o'clock this evening to change your mind."
"I sha'n't change it on that point."
They turned to walk down the hill. Mr. Barden a great deal more serious than ever, and plumbing now the very depths of sombreness, thrust his hands in his pockets, and tried again to hum, but gave up the attempt. Mord Em'ly, with her lips well set, and her face rather white, looked straight before her. When they reached the busy junction, of the tram lines she spoke.
"I'm sorry, 'Enery."
"I'm a bit upset, too."
"Daresay you'll think about me sometimes."
"I take me oath," said Henry Barden strenuously, "I sha'n't think of nobody else."
Mord Em'ly held out her hand.
"I must be getting back," she said.
"This being our last time of meeting," he said, swallowing something in his throat, "and us two 'aving known each other for some considerable period, might there be any objection, Mord Em'ly, to me offering you a kiss?"
"If you don't mind," said Mord Em'ly, glancing round to note the attitude of passers-by, "I don't."
Mord Em'ly, hastily on the way to the dining-rooms, stopped to look back. Henry Barden was still at the place where they had said good-bye, looking thoughtfully at the ground, as though half hopeful of finding there some solution of the difficulty. She waited a few moments, in order to be able to wave another farewell, but he did not look up.
Mord Em'ly's resentment against the ordering of events was not lessened by the later attitude of Miss Mitchell. That young woman, in proud possession of a new bracelet, spoke glowingly of journeys by sea, of the rare happiness to be found on distant shores, of joyous solitudes of two. Miss Mitchell being with Mord Em'ly that evening, in order to accompany her some part of the distance up Old Kent Road, in the direction of Pandora, became so sentimental in picturing the joys of two fond loving hearts on a far-off, wave-lapped shore that, impressed with her own fervour, she shed tears; whereupon Mord Em'ly, in desperation, ran away from her. Near Old Kent Road Station she slackened her steps, because she noticed in a side street a crowd, and no true Londoner ever passes a crowd without first ascertaining the reason of its existence. This seemed a lively crowd, too, which was something in its favour, engaged in heckling the bare-headed Mr. Wetherell, who, standing on a high-backed chair, was loudly addressing them. Mr. Wetherell's face was tied up with a bandage; he seemed annoyed at some remark that had been jerked at him.
"I'm no runnygide!" cried Mr. Wetherell, and "I 'url back the charge in the teeth of them what make it! It recoils on them, fellow comrides, and leaves me spotless as the driven snow!"
"Where'd you get that fice?" asked the crowd curiously.
"Never you mind my fice! That's not what we're arguin about. You leave my fice alone!"
"Other people don't, apparently!" shouted the crowd.
"We're arguin about this new development that's being made by the aid of capital in our n'i'bourhood, and I'm asking you to support it tooth and nail, and to put your signatures to the documents that you'll find at various places to testify the same. Socialist as I am, fellow workmen—"
The crowd groaned.
"And proud of the name, still, at the same time, when I see something useful done by capital and in the nime of capital, I 'old out my 'and to capital, and I— "
"Take all you can get," suggested the crowd.
"That was not what I was going to say. I was about to remark that I'm a man that can adapt his principles to the requirements of the age. I want to interest my fellow working-men in this matter, and I want them to adapt their principles as well as me."
"Who pays you for all this?" inquired a voice.
"Ah!" shouted Wetherell furiously, pointing at the owner of the voice, "there's sordidness for you! There's your true money-grubber. There he is; that one with the nose, I mean. There's a type of man that can't allow for a single moment that anybody should possess certain, what I may call, principles, and be prepared to argue in fiver of these principles from early morn till dewy eve. Such is the base, the cowardly, the unmanly condition of that person there standing amongst your midst, that he can't recognise a honest 'eart when he meets one walking about."
The crowd seemed dazed by this dashing spray of words and some looked at the interrupter with reproof.
"But, comrides, why should I waste my time and your time by denouncing a paltry imitation of a man like him? Let him return to the pot-'ouse that knows him so well, and let him 'esitite, let him 'esitite, I say, before he again dares to treat honest men with the voice of contumely, the voice of abuse, and the voice of slander. I point the finger of truth at him, comrides, and see how he cowes before—"
"I ain't cowing," protested the interrupter.
"The more shame to you!" bawled Mr. Wetherell. "Comrides, enough of this. My time is up, but before I step down let me say this: That true liberty consists, not in making slives of each other, not in following blindly the dictates of others, but in acting in accordance with your own consciences, your own mind, and your own menly common-sense."
Wetherell came panting through the crowd, and spoke to Mord Em'ly. He took from his pocket, and showed her furtively, several £5 notes, and demanded to know whether that was not a little bit of all-right? She asked him what had happened to his face, and he seemed at first unwilling to say. Eventually he explained. He had been walking along, chatting to a comrade (he said) about nothing in particular—in fact, about Mord Em'ly herself—when a person had come up shouting loudly something very personal.
"What were you saying about me?"
"Upon which," said Wetherell evasively, "I touches him on the shoulder, and I says, 'Pardon me. You are now interrupting in what don't concern you, and I'll trouble you to withdraw your recent remarks without further delay. Otherwise, I says, I shall be under the pineful necessity of dotting you one.' 'Do it,' says the chap. And we had a set-to—all on your account, mind—and in the tussle somehow I got a bit damaged. Of course, I don't mean to say that he didn't get as good as he gave. I may not be specially clever in putting up me dooks, never 'aving given much time to the business, but I can make 'em say what I mean. And then this chap—"
"Wonder who it was?"
"I didn't know him from Adam," said Wetherell lightly. "Never seen him before, and sha'n't be much upset if I never see him again. But it's just as well to let 'em see that if anybody goes bandying your name about, they've got me to contend with."
"Thanks," said Mord Em'ly.