The Hopperton Boy

by Albert Kinross

 

THE HOPPERTON BOY

BY ALBERT KINROSS

Illustrated By A. Wallis Mills.

I.

JACK HOPPERTON had been in London a fortnight, and was already sick and tired of the dreary place. He had come home from distant California, after an absence of close on twenty years. He had made money in California, and in London he had hoped to spend it. But he was spending nothing to speak of, and, indeed, this home-coming was fast shaping towards what he, in his downright way, would have described as “a big mistake.” The day on which he finally committed himself to this description saw him seated on one of the wooden benches that besprinkle Primrose Hill.

Everybody knows, or should know, Primrose Hill. Poets have mentioned it, and standard authors. It is an open space, a modest eminence, immediately adjacent to the Zoo, the Regent's Park, and the prosperous suburb whose postal designation is South Hampstead. Its green slopes and gravelled paths are a favourite haunt of the children, nursery maids, and governesses of that prolific quarter. Hopperton, whose own nursery maids and governesses had once wheeled or accompanied his brothers, his sisters, and himself to this dingy playground, now sat again on one of its benches and discovered that his home-coming had been “a big mistake.”

It was early in the afternoon, and he had arrived out here after a prolonged and mournful tour of the aforementioned South Hampstead. It was his native suburb. Old-time friends, associates, and even relatives near and dear, had been cold to him, forgetful, unenthusiastic; to-day, urged by some inner want, some human need of comfort, he had gone forth as one goes forth to graveyards or the scene of former lives long vanished. He had revisited the past.

Leaning over the garden gate and alarming an elderly lady in a cap, who had fetched a stout gentleman with a bald head, he had lingered outside his father's red-brick villa, long since sold to strangers—here they were, apparently!—who had abolished his mother's heavy curtains, repapered the dining- room, and stuck a doctor's plate upon the door. He had found his uncle's hospitable home, now turned into a boarding-house; and his first day-school had disappeared, while on its site there stood a tall and many- windowed block of flats. He had wondered whether anybody outside himself remembered the day school. The boys wore little striped caps—crimson and black—and the headmaster hit you on the hand with a ruler when you did things. Hopperton saw himself standing up to it. He was dressed in a sailor suit and worsted stockings.

In only one place was he remembered; and that was in Ireland's Lane, where all the shops used to be, and the shopkeepers' sons, with whom one fought and they fought back—there had been no end to the fighting. In Ireland's Lane was the same tobacconists, where years ago he had bought forbidden cigarettes, smoking them secretly or brazenly, according to the occasion. “I seem to know your face,” said the tobacconist, as Hopperton, leisurely and interested, made his purchase and looked about him; and, “Yes, we used to live in Fellows Road,” answered Hopperton. The tobacconist had grown stout and sleek and puffy. In the olden time he had been a very handsome man. Hopperton, as a boy, had looked up to the tobacconist; one of his deepest and most cherished aspirations had been to possess such features, such a figure, and just such a moustache. To-day, however, he had no wish to exchange exteriors with the tobacconist.... Seated on one of the wooden benches that besprinkle Primrose Hill, smoking the tobacconist's very best cigar, Hopperton was reviewing these and sundry other matters connected with his “big mistake.”

He was lamenting his deplorably friendless condition, his gradual disillusion and dismay, lamenting, too, the misprized intimates he had parted from in distant California, when a governess approached with two small children and established herself in the other corner of the wooden bench. It was a large bench, with room enough and to spare for everybody. Hopperton hardly did more than observe the arrival of the newcomers. His personal troubles possessed him, obscuring his customary interest in an outside and hitherto alluring world. And, moreover, the governess would not at a first glance have been described as a pretty governess—nor even at a second.

He had come back, he was reflecting, and nobody seemed to care. Friends, relatives, had changed, had married, had moved away—marriage seemed to alter them more than anything. All the old ties were dead. His sisters, his brothers, married to tepid husbands, or still more tepid wives, had received him with nothing warmer than a mild curiosity. Back in California people knew about him, took an interest in him, hearty, genuine—he was one of themselves. He had pictured himself made welcome in England, a snug place ready for him. He had pictured himself as the master of a fine house and dispensing a choice and generous hospitality. Of course, it was easy enough to buy or hire people. How long this doleful reverie would have lasted is uncertain. It was interrupted by the growing rowdiness of the two small children who had arrived in the care of the governess, and who ever since—the governess still sat in her corner—had occupied the vacant portion of the wooden bench.

They were truly horrid children. Hopperton sat up now and observed them. The boy was disobedient and answered back; the girl was a red-haired little imp who nagged and persecuted. The governess, a young, yet harried-looking person inclined to leanness (“And no wonder!” thought Hopperton) was evidently trying to snatch a moment's leisure and repose. These two ill-mannered brats were plaguing the life out of her. A frown settled on Jack Hopperton's sunburnt face. A bachelor, and therefore something of a sentimentalist, he had had no idea that children could behave so badly. The young woman's name was Miss Bailey, and these two little wretches shrieked it aloud.

It was Miss Bailey this and Miss Bailey that from the children, and “Give Stella her book, Georgie,” and “Stop pinching Georgie, Stella,” from the governess, and, “Come off the damp grass, Georgie,” and Georgie declining, and Miss Bailey fetching him out of it, and the little girl making personal and rude remarks, always prefaced by “Miss Bailey.” She was a regular little fiend. Hopperton, a large and simple-minded man, was at last driven to act as large and simple-minded men occasionally do act. Without hesitation and without considering beyond the immediate present he seized young Master Georgie by the ear and gave him one or two smart raps with his cane. “You'll do as Miss Bailey tells you,” he said briefly. A less severe though equally spontaneous castigation was next administered to Miss Stella; and these operations ended, Jack Hopperton looked up and found himself confronted by a stout and irate woman who spoke with a foreign accent.

“You tare to hit my chiltren, sir,” she cried; “vot have dey done to you, de tarlings!”

“The darlings!” snorted Hopperton; “little beasts!”

“He said it was because of Miss Bailey,” whined the little girl.

“Yes, he said it was Miss Bailey,” blubbered Georgie.

The woman turned from Hopperton to the quaking governess.

“You bermit dis, Miss Pailey,” she said; “you encourage him?”

“Miss Bailey couldn't help herself,” from Hopperton.

Suddenly from quiescence and a penetrating loneliness he had moved into the midmost centre of a tornado.

The two children howled louder than ever; their mother stormed at Miss Bailey; while Hopperton explained his guilt and took the entire responsibility.

“I tismiss you,” shrieked the woman, with a dramatic gesture in the direction of poor Miss Bailey; “my husband vill send you your vages, and never you tare to come near my chiltren again. And as to you, sir”—she had turned to Hopperton—“I vill tell de bark-keeber; I vill tell bleesemen; you vill pe had ub for dis—you tink you can hit my chiltren!”

Miss Bailey sat, a terrified heap, in her corner of the wooden bench; Hopperton, defiant and unconvinced, said he cared neither for the park-keeper nor all the policemen on Primrose Hill, and added something about “this poor girl.” The woman gathered her offspring to her side and began to drag them home, still blubbering, and turning back as though anxious to see the last of a personage, so formidable, so unexpected, and eventful. Hopperton was left alone on the bench with poor Miss Bailey.

“I—I couldn't help it,” he said at last, feeling that some sort of an apology was necessary. “They were such little beasts.”

A wan smile answered him. Miss Bailey,at the moment, could do no more.

“You'll be glad to be rid of them.” He was, and he knew he was, making the best of a poor case.

“I don't know,” she said.

And then he guessed the root of her concern.

“You'll have to get another job?” he asked.

Miss Bailey nodded.

“Is it difficult?”

“Very difficult.”

Obviously it must be if she could feel the loss of such a job as this. He looked at her; he thought hard for a space. He must make it up to her in some way; it was all his fault. He couldn't offer her money; he knew nobody who might employ her

“I've got a little boy,” he now announced; “I've been looking for somebody to take him out and give him lessons; in fact, I'd advertised in this morning's Telegraph.”

It was an amazing and impromptu lie; but how else could he make good the harm that he had done, how else pay over damages and compensation? And he went even deeper, enjoying and arresting the look of relief that had come over her, that was fast expelling the extreme dejection of Miss Bailey unemployed and without a “character.”

“He's a wonderful good-hearted little chap,” he had pursued; “he'll do anything for you if you're friendly with him. Of course, he is a boy; but not that kind of boy——”

“Do you—do you think your wife would approve——” began Miss Bailey.

“Oh, I'm a widower,” he answered briskly. He could manage the boy, but to invent a wife as well—he felt that that was a trifle beyond him. And then, “This is my card,” he added. “Tm staying at the Grafton Hotel. Your engagement begins to-day, Miss Bailey. You'll take the child out every morning and see to him in the afternoon. And—er—I suppose it's business, and that I had better ask your terms.”

She mentioned an incredibly low figure; and, as though fearing that even this might be refused, “I'll have to pay 'bus fares out of it,” she had begun—but Hopperton interrupted her.

“We'll double that,” he said; “and I think you had better take cabs and let me pay for 'em—saves time.”

Before they separated he had noted her address, and had promised to write, giving further and exact particulars, that very evening.

II.

Miss Bailey—poor wretch!—inhabited a poky little room on the third floor of a house in King Henry's Road. It should have been a dressing-room, for a door connected it with the big bedroom that looked out over the back garden and was occupied by the old gentleman who snored. This door was religiously locked, nay, almost sealed. The Misses McCurdy, who let the “apartments” and whose house it was, saw to that. They tolerated Miss Bailey, giving her this corner and allowing her to cook things over an apparatus which they declared was sure “some day” to set the place on fire. So far, however, that day had not arrived, and as Miss Bailey paid regularly, and made her own little bed and gave no trouble except when she caught cold and had to stay in it, the Misses McCurdy let her have the room on the distinct understanding that she must clear out of it in case it was “wanted”; that is to say, whenever a “married couple” came in and replaced the old gentleman who snored. Really, and in their heart of hearts, the Misses McCurdy never expected to let the rooms to a married couple, such couples (the lady especially) being no end of a nuisance, and always ringing the bell.

Miss Bailey was busy over the apparatus, making, indeed, what she called her breakfast, when the letter that she had been listening for arrived. The servant girl, who went round with the morning letters and pushed them under doors, was breathing hard outside. Miss Bailey cried, “All right, Polly,” and in another moment she had flung herself on the bed and was reading a downright and highly masculine hand, that started with “Dear Miss Bailey,” and ended with “Yours cordially, J. Hopperton.” There was also an enclosure, and this enclosure felt like money found.

“Dear Miss Bailey,” he said—for he had already become he in that young person's private mind—“When I reached the hotel last evening I found that little Jimmy was far from well. The doctor who was called in says it is measles. Nothing very serious: but we have thought best—and the hotel people wanted it, because measles is catching—to send the youngster away to a home at the seaside, where he will be well looked after, far better than in a big hotel with its noise, etcetera. Now, my dear Miss Bailey, this is not going to affect our arrangement. It is not your fault that the dear fellow was taken ill, and so, as you know nothing at all about me and so forth, I enclose a cheque for your first month's salary, which will always be paid in advance, that being my business habit, and one which I believe in thoroughly, having as a young man often run into debt for no other reason than that I had to wait for my salary.

“Now, while my young man recovers,” the letter continued, “I have a proposition to put forward. It will fill in your time, and it will assist me greatly in a scheme I have in hand. Of course, you can decline it, for you have not been engaged to go house-hunting and buying furniture, but to give lessons and so forth to my little boy. Briefly, it is this. I am a retired business man, and I have just come back from California, where I have spent the last twenty years. I want to spend the rest of my life in my own country, and I am thinking of taking a comfortable house and furnishing it, somewhere in South Hampstead, where I was born and brought up. Now I know very little about house-hunting and furnishing. It is really a woman's business. I cannot very well ask my sisters or other friends to give up the time required; but, perhaps, you wouldn't mind, and we could go on with this while Jimmy is getting on with his measles. It is, of course, just as you like, but I would be very grateful for a woman's help in this matter, and I would like to begin at once.” In conclusion, J. Hopperton awaited her reply, and was, as already stated, hers cordially.

Miss Bailey next unfolded the cheque and looked at it. She had never owned a cheque before, always being paid in hard cash and not much of that either. What with the money Mrs. Salzmann had sent round and this cheque she felt quite rich; and feeling rich was but a step from planning new garments, including underwear. Not that anybody else would see it—Miss Bailey blushed a light pink at the mere thought; but there can be no reasonable doubt that it was the new garments (including underwear) which definitely committed her to the house-hunting and the furnishing. She wrote her letter and posted it that morning, and Hopperton wired back that he would call for her at eleven o'clock next day.

III.

To return to Hopperton. He was, as we know, an idle man with nothing in the world to do, and when he left Miss Bailey on Primrose Hill, he really had some intention of finding a boy and letting Miss Bailey look after the little chap. But as he walked through Regent's Park and became practical once more, he didn't quite see why he should saddle himself with an adopted son; for it was perfectly clear that if he actually got hold of such a boy as the one he had sketched to her, he would have to stick to the little beggar and make him his own for good. His plan of life included no such impromptu adoptions. He had lied himself in, he now reflected, and he would have to lie himself out again. Yet for all that the adventure amused him and keyed him up. For the first time since his arrival in England he felt that there were things for him to do, that life here might possibly be agreeable and full of interests and occupations.

It was after dinner that he had decided on the house and the furniture. Of course, far back in distant California, he had dreamt of such a house, but the cold realities of his reception here had made the dream recede, and it had almost reached vanishing point when he sat himself down on the wooden bench and thought of his father's villa, the tobacconist, and the “big mistake.” This evening it resurged in all its splendour; so much so, that when he threw away his second cigar and wrote off to Miss Bailey, the lies and business of his letter were the least part of that thoughtful document. They came quite easy—especially the lies. He enjoyed these terribly; that boy of his was really a “most awful lark.” He grew serious, however, when he came to the house and furniture. Yes, he'd buy them, get them; he'd chance it; life in the old country mightn't be so bad. But perhaps she'd be afraid of him. He knew that women—and especially unmarried women—had a code of what they might do and what they mightn't. He had never been able to make head or tail of it himself. They had rules, he knew, and the exceptions were so numerous that the rules might be the exceptions and vice versa. He'd chance that as well. House-hunting and choosing furniture was a woman's job, and a man was likely to make a fool of himself if he started out on it alone, and he couldn't very well ask his sisters or any of the people who had been cold to him; so here was a real use for poor Miss Bailey, and one he hoped she could accept... He went to bed seeing large and prominent houses that made people gape and ask who lived in them. The answer was always “Mr. Hopperton,” accompanied by references to California and the Borton Oilfields. And he saw, too, chairs and carpets, and hangings, and himself sprawling in front of the fireplace, or mixing drinks at a side table. Mr. Hopperton's it was again, and he was—well, you know who he was.

IV.

Punctually at eleven the next morning Hopperton drove up in a taxicab and left it waiting while he rang the bell. The Misses McCurdy observed him through the kitchen window, Miss Alice, who was stout and dignified, maintaining that he had called about “rooms,” and that she really wasn't fit to go upstairs, while Miss Esther, who was lean and bilious, said: “We haven't any rooms,' and supposed that he had come to visit Mr. Eastwell, Mr. Eastwell being the old party who snored. When Polly, the little “general” with the truly awful appetite—“She'd eat the joint if you left her alone with it,' so said the two Misses McCurdy, who took good care that no such tête-à-tête occurred—when Polly, the little general, came down and said that the gentleman had asked for Miss Bailey, and had announced his intention to wait “here,” meaning the hall, both ladies frowned. “The idea!” exclaimed Miss Alice; “and a taxi-cab too!” added Miss Esther. But all this was as nothing to what they said when Miss Bailey's new hat appeared on the horizon, and a pair of new shoes in mouse-coloured leather, with openwork stockings to match. You could see the stockings and a very neat ankle as Miss Bailey was handed into the taxi-cab. The ankle, however, was wasted on the two Misses McCurdy. “So that's what's become of the cheque she asked us to change for her,” said Miss Alice; and “Nice goings on!” added Miss Esther, whose biliousness often made her say things in the morning that she was sorry for in the afternoon, and never would have said at all if she had only known. “Perhaps they're engaged,” now suggested Miss Alice; and this novel aspect occupied both ladies till the butcher called, and was told to take back a pound and a half of suet which he had tried to pass off as an integral and inevitable portion of a round of beef.

The ankle, though wasted on the two Miss McCurdys, was not entirely thrown away upon Jack Hopperton. He noted its existence with approval, and altogether he found Miss Bailey looking “very well.” He told her so as they drove on to a house agent's, and repeated that he was glad to see she hadn't taken her recent trials too seriously. Miss Bailey, sitting in a taxi-cab, and crowned with a new hat, had somehow become a very different young person from Miss Bailey doing governess and properly sacked by Mrs. Salzmann. There was a something about her that was just as new as the new hat, and quite as striking as the freshly purchased shoes and stockings. “She's enjoying herself,” meditated Jack Hopperton; and, indeed, such was the case.

They looked over several houses, Miss Bailey looking harder than anybody, and then they both agreed that it was time for lunch. The taxi-cab now took them westward, and Miss Bailey made a first acquaintance with the fanciful meals of that locality. Judged by this instance, they were rather good. She ate things she had never eaten in her life before, and very probably might never eat again; and so she ate with thoroughness, in case. She distrusted strange liquids, and therefore took her stand by water neat. They conversed about the house and the little boy. Miss Bailey felt rather mean for forgetting him till now—those houses were such a distraction. The little boy was going on nicely, and in another week or two his father hoped the lessons could begin.

The house—they took three weeks and several days to find it—was not actually in Hampstead, but in a village called St. Mary Cray. You reached it from Victoria under the hour, including the drive from the station. They had begun with Hampstead and its two big avenues, where house and garden often covered half an acre, and, little by little, Miss Bailey had said her say, which was to the effect that a gentleman of Mr. Hopperton's position, and with nothing in the world to do, would be more properly housed either right in town or right away from town. Hampstead, it appeared, was all very well if you were tied to a daily grind at an office, but if you weren't, you wanted either to be near your clubs, or else to have some little property whose interests would fill up your time. Miss Bailey's father had been a country parson, and taken prizes at all the flower shows round; and Hopperton, who was always open to conviction, felt at last that Miss Bailey, as usual, was right, and he, as usual, was wrong. He couldn't for ever be gazing at his father's red-brick villa, or exchanging reminiscences with the tobacconist. The house that they decided on stood in fifteen acres, had plenty of stabling—Hopperton was fond of horses—lots of glass, and he would be able to grow all his own vegetables and most of his fruit. Miss Bailey, meanwhile, had become familiar with the wildest lunches, even those you gobble down at railway stations while waiting for your train. And the boy? He still had the measles, and was making a slow recovery, till one day Hopperton announced that it was best to keep him at the seaside while all this house-hunting and furnishing was going on. Miss Bailey agreed; and when one Sunday Hopperton went down to the seaside and actually saw the boy, who, it appeared, sent his respectful compliments to Miss Bailey, the governess felt quite delighted that she was doing so much towards providing the little fellow with a really pleasant home. And then—and then—a horrible thought invaded her. If the Hoppertons lived in the country, and she in King Henry's Road, how would she be able to do her governessing? She would give notice at the McCurdy's—lately, they hadn't been very nice to her; she would find lodgings in the village; yes, that was what she would do. Miss Bailey felt sure that there were lodgings, and no Miss McCurdys to peep and pry. So did Hopperton. The way he lied about that boy of his, and everything connected with that boy, astonished him, even though he had been a successful business man in California, and was still dabbling in oil over here in England.

V.

It was only when the house was actually taken and the lease signed that Miss Bailey recognised that she had been “going on as though it were her house.” For she had. She loved the country; she detested Hampstead; and that was the real reason why they were all going to live at St. Mary Cray. Hopperton and she had quarrelled about it at first, and always Miss Bailey had subsided with a sudden start, saying: “Of course, it's your house, and I'm only coming to give lessons—how absurd of me!” Then Hopperton had smiled, remarking: “I believe you're right, Miss Bailey; anyhow, you know more what's proper than I do, being a woman—and besides, I've been out of the old country these twenty years.” That was how Miss Bailey got her way. And now they had the house; and it was just such a house as Miss Bailey had always dreamt of, but never, never hoped to see in real brick and stone. Of course, she had dreamt of living in it, and being its mistress. However, she was quite content with choosing it and being the governess till the boy was ready for school. And now we come to the furniture and the awful rows they had about that.

Hopperton's taste was for getting things over quickly, and a plentiful supply of large easy chairs in which he could sprawl and feel at home. Miss Bailey wanted things to match the house—and they took some finding. She wouldn't be satisfied because the men in the furniture shop said so and so. She knew exactly what that house required, and she was determined that it should have it. She fought and battled, and looked through catalogues for the exact shade of wall paper, and carpets that would match, and curtains that would go with these; and when Jack Hopperton grew weary and said “Damn it!”—you see they had grown quite intimate in these six weeks—when Jack Hopperton grew sick of wall papers, Miss Bailey would collapse and look up with a sudden start; and then: “How foolish of me! Of course, it's your wall-paper, and I'm only coming in to give lessons.” Whereat Hopperton, thinking of his really atrocious lie, began to grin, and answered: “Go ahead; I'm sure you're right, Miss Bailey.” He noticed now that the shopmen called her “Madam,” evidently mistaking her for his wife; while some said “Mrs. Hopperton” quite plain, and he noticed how she blushed and put up with it. The Misses McCurdy and Polly the servant girl, who would have eaten joints if given the opportunity, noticed other and more brilliant things. There were two new hats, there was the blue dress that fastened up at the side, and the grey dress that fastened up behind, and there was underwear to correspond with all this opulence; and now Miss Bailey had her breakfast like a Christian, instead of cooking and boiling on that apparatus which was sure “some day” to set the place on fire.

It is rather silly to go further with all this wall-paper and furnishing, and the men in the house and getting them out again. Every established couple has been through it, and the unestablished will never quite understand. Hopperton and Miss Bailey had tiffs and made it up again. Once she gave him notice. It was about the side-board in the dining-room. She wanted real old oak to match the chairs; he said that imitation was just as good, and that he was sick of sideboards, anyway. He was in a rather bad temper. “I don't want to spend the rest of my life in furniture shops,” he said, “let's get a sideboard and be done with it.” “You needn't speak to me like that,” said Miss Bailey; and she gave him notice there and then. “All right, we'll have the sideboard,” said he, “provided you go and look for it.” And Miss Bailey went and found it, and it was packed and sent off to St. Mary Cray.

They had begun in April. By the seventeenth of August the house was fit and finished; and all the while Jack Hopperton's boy had been staying by the sea.

VI.

Servants had been engaged; the whole place was ready. Jack and Miss Bailey went down in the morning, and for the first time contemplated it as a whole. It was a truly marvellous whole. Hopperton went through the rooms and was convinced. Miss Bailey had realised the house of all her dreams. They had come true, and now some other woman was free to enter on them. Poor little Miss Bailey! She had filled out; she had grown pretty and even charming in the four months that had elapsed since she sat with the Salzmann children on the wooden bench that stands on Primrose Hill. Her work was ended; now they would send for the boy, and she would come in and give him lessons and take him out for walks. They had furnished a night nursery and a day nursery Hopperton didn't care; perhaps, instead of living in lodgings, she would be asked to move in and occupy these quarters and stay in them. When the boy came back a great gulf would divide her from the master of the house. She, upstairs, would be the governess; he, downstairs, would entertain his friends and take no more notice of her than if she had been a fly upon the window-pane. Less—because a fly upon the window-pane is frequently extinguished.... Miss Bailey thought these thoughts as they moved from room to room and saw that it was good. And out in the garden they halted, while Hopperton picked her a rose—one of his own roses—and placed another in his button-hole. “It's all your doing,” he said, “without you I would have eaten my heart out in town, or gone back again to oil and California—this is better;” and he filled his lungs full of the good air.

“And Jimmy,” she asked, “he's coming back to-morrow? Are you going to have me in the house or out of it?” she added. “We haven't settled that.”

“Been too busy,” said he. And then suddenly he felt a brute, and a scallywag, and a monster, and all sorts of dreadful things—she looked so charming in the new grey dress that fastened up behind. “There isn't any Jimmy,” he now confessed; “I made him up—I made him up because it was my fault Mrs, Salzmann dismissed you, and I didn't know any other way to make it good ——”

“There isn't any little boy—and you never wanted a governess!”

“Never a ghost of one—but I suppose I wanted you.”

“There isn't any little boy?” she asked.

“Only a big one—won't he do as well?” And evidently he would; for three weeks after that—Miss Bailey wanted the time to get her trousseau—began a honeymoon in the house of poor Miss Bailey's dreams. And as to the Hopperton boy, he came later. And this time there was no mistake about him, and his name really was Jimmy, as put above—James Bailey Hopperton.