Chapter 16

Mord Em’ly said good-bye to Mitchell’s Dining-Rooms, and Mrs. Mitchell kissed her, cried a good deal, and gave to her ten shillings over and above her wages, a number of ham sandwiches, and a bunch of coral that originally came (Mrs. Mitchell said) from goodness only knew where. Miss Mitchell so far unbent as to go with Mord Em’ly to call on the sergeant’s wife, and on the way imparted, in strict confidence, the growing impression that it was a silly, stupid world, and that, likely as not, she should live and die an old maid. The sergeant’s wife greeted Mord Em’ly, and, being informed of the circumstances, declared that if Mord Em’ly did not object to a chair bedstead, and could reconcile herself to a room at the top of the house in Hatcham Park Road, why, let her send for her box forthwith, and she should receive the welcome that was extended to flowers in May. This accordingly was done; and then Miss Mitchell, with great gentility, withdrew, warning Mord Em’ly that in case of any trouble in affairs of the heart, she was the person to be instantly consulted, as one possessing knowledge which experience alone could bring. Mord Em’ly thanked her, and said that, so far as she was concerned, there was precious little chance of anything of the kind happening.

Mord Em’ly shared the not altogether unique inability to peer into the future. That afternoon, at Greenwich Park, being in company with the sergeant’s infant, who was militarily apparelled as a Highlander, and had a weakness for abrading his small knees, she met Wetherell. Wetherell resisted the efforts of the infant Highlander to play games of being locked up, and walked with them through the broad avenue to the refreshment house near the Blackheath gates. Here the infant was furnished with occupation by an immense sugared bun, which he was unable to eat whole, and unwilling to deal with in any other fashion.

“And ‘ave you tried for anything else?” inquired Wetherell, when Mord Em’ly had explained.

“Been to one place this afternoon.”

“Didn’t get it, I lay?”

“No. It was filled.”

“And so you’ll find it,” said Wetherell pessimistically, “with others. You might be out for weeks and weeks.”

“Oh, no, I sha’n’t.”

“Oh, yes, you will. The market is overcrowded. The supply is in excess of the demand. Overpopulation is ‘aving its natural effect, ayloft capital, with its outspread wings, is witing like a ‘awk—”

“Cheese it!” said Mord Em’ly, “you ain’t in the Broadway now.”

“All the same,” said Wetherell, “you’ll find you’ve got rough weather in store if you ain’t a bit artful.”

“I’m right enough for the present, anyhow. I’m very comfortable, and I’m looked after, and—”

“Do you mean to tell me”, he said, pushing back his soft hat, “That you’ll consent of your own free-will to take from the ‘and of charity? Do you mean to sit there and tell me that you’re prepared to stand at the gate of the rich, like Dives of old—”

Can’t I go and stay with friends if I like?”

“What!” said Wetherell, with a good deal of scorn, “and be under a obligation to others? I shouldn’t ‘ave thought it of you, ‘pon me word. Always fancied you’d got more independence, more spirit, more of the qualities that the poet—”

“Oh, bother the poet!” said Mord Em’ly, perturbed at this reproof. “You talk about independence! What are you doing for a living, I should like to know, since you gave up your facia writing? So now, then! There’s a bit of a mystery—”

“Look ‘ere,” said Wetherell, with an acute air. “We’re chums, and I don’t mind telling you that I’m just playin’.”

“Pity you ain’t working.”

“I know a trick worth twenty of that,” he replied confidently, “Me and a friend ‘ave tore ourselves away from the party we formerly belonged to, and we are now organisin’ the labourin classes.”

“Why can’t you leave ’em alone?”

“Between ourselves,” said Mr. Wetherell frankly, “because it pays us not to. Between ourselves, because we supply a long-felt want, and there’s money in it. Between ourselves, because we know the ropes, and we know a few newspaper reporters, and we two, my friend and me, are now prepared to get up a meeting on any subject you like for a certain sum paid down.

“Any subject?”

“Any blooming subject,” declared Wetherell strenuously, “you blooming well like to mention.”

The infant Highlander was called by Mord Em’ly, and, to prevent further expenditure of needless labour, the sugared bun was broken into four parts. The infant, annoyed at being thus foiled in his ambitious scheme, declined to touch the pieces until Mord Em’ly proposed to eat them herself, whereupon he made haste to despatch them.

“I daresay,” said Mr. Wetherell casually, “you ain’t partic’lar flush of chips just now!”

“Ain’t what?”

“I say, I s’pose there isn’t too much money knocking about with you?”

“I mus’n’t grumble.”

“P’r’aps,” he said, taking out a purse with some nervousness, “p’raps you wouldn’t mind borr’ing ‘alf a quid from me till you get into a place again?”

“I don’t want your ‘alf sovereign,” said Mord Em’ly, not ungraciously. “I’ve got enough to go on with.”

“You’ll pardon me suggesting?”

“That’s all right,” said Mord Em’ly.

“If we was wise,” said Mr. Wetherell, looking up at the tree near which they were sitting, “we should set up ‘ouse together, you and me, and then you wouldn’t ‘ave to beg for bread from a member of the force paid and kept by a scoundrelly State to browbeat the humble and the weak. And I should be a jolly sight more comfortable, too. I’ve got a little ‘ouse in my eye now not a ‘undred miles from ‘ere. Did you read those pamphlets I lent you?”

“I glanced through ’em,” she said absently.

“Well, what—”

“They give me a ‘eadache trying to understand ’em.”

“It’s clear enough to them that can grasp the argument and realise what the writers are driving at. In this little ‘ouse I’m speaking of my idea now was to get some furniture on the ‘ire system.”

Mord Em’ly looked straight before her, and did not answer. The infant Highlander had found an infant boatswain, and they were arguing fiercely in the attempt to cast the parts of the comedy they proposed to play. Both desired to play policeman, and the sergeant’s son had an idea of also playing magistrate, but this suggestion did not commend itself to the boatswain.

“Light furniture, you know; and there’d be a bit of a garden out at the back where we could grow flowers. Or try to.”

Mord Em’ly was silent.

“And if the funds ran to it,” he went on, “what I thought was that we’d ‘ave a gel to do all the rough work, so that—”

“A servant?” said Mord Em’ly, with a sudden interest. “You mean keep a servant in the ‘ouse?”

“To a certain extent,” he said, “yes. And me and you to see that she did her work properly, and keep her up to the mark. They take a lot of looking after,” went on Mr. Wetherell, “if you want to get your money’s worth out of them.”

“Shouldn’t I fancy meself,” cried Mord Em’ly, laughing childishly, “with a servant to wait on me ‘and and foot. I should ‘ave to begin to learn how to aspirate my aitches.”

“You’d soon get used to the life,” said Wetherell encouragingly.

“Ah, should I?” she remarked doubtingly. “Why, I should be like a fish out of water. Besides, it’s nonsense to talk about it.”

“It ain’t nonsense. You don’t dislike me, do you?”

“I ain’t so sure about that,” she said. Looking at him, her cheeks flushed. “I couldn’t stand you a bit at one time.”

“That wears off,” said Mr. Wetherell.

“Not always.”

“In the present case we shall find— There ain’t no one else, is there?” he said suddenly. She did not answer, and he raised his voice aggressively. “’Ear what I’m asking you?”

Mord Em’ly moved a foot rather nervously on the gravel.

“I ask a fair question,” said Wetherell, with an injured air, “and I expect a fair answer. Is there someone else, or ain’t there someone else?”

“There was!“

He swore in a whisper.

“What’s become of him?”

“Gone abroad,” she said briefly.

“For good?”

“For his good.”

“And d’you still care for him?”

“Mind your own business,” said Mord Em’ly.

“It is my business.”

“Don’t you try to know too much!” she said.

“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “so long as he’s abroad, I don’t know that I’ve any pertic’lar call to be inquisitive. Only I’ve got a certain amount of manly spirit about me, you understand, and I shouldn’t like to think you was playing fast and loose. I don’t want to go to the expense of rigging up a ‘ome and engaging a domestic servant—”

“What sort of a girl would she be?” inquired Mord Em’ly.

“Big, strong, useful sort of woman, about twenty-two or three. One that you could make responsible for all the ‘ard work, and make her wait on you. In fact, my idea was that she should be a kind of a lady’s maid and a general servant combined.”

This time Mord Em’ly laughed outright. Her feet came off the gravel, and she rocked to and fro with amusement.

“Fancy me,” she said, wiping her eyes, “fancy me with a servant. Wonder what people would say?”

“Say?” echoed Mr. Wetherell. “Why, they’d say you was a lucky gel, and that you was one who’d got her ‘ead screwed on the right way. Say? Why, they’d envy you your position in life; they’d wish they’d been as fortunate as you was. Say? Why, they’d say—”

“Come out of that pulpit,” said Mord Em’ly impatiently. “When you begin to put on your lecturing way you seem to get on my nerves.”

“Shall we say it’s agreed on?” asked Wetherell. “I can’t give you more than a week, because this little ‘ouse I’ve got my eye on will be took by someone else if I don’t give a answer by next Sat’day.”

“There’s no ‘urry,” she said, in a low voice.

“I tell you there is hurry. I tell you that I ain’t the kind of chap to stand any nonsense. I tell you that if you fancy for a moment that you’re going to keep me on a bit of string, and then, at the last moment, hop off and leave me, you’ve made the biggest mistake you ever made in the ‘ole course of your existence. I’ve had some experience in these matters—”

“That’s as well to know,” she interrupted shortly.

“I don’t mean what you mean,” he said hastily. “What I wanted to say was that I am no fool. I’m John Blunt, I am,” he went on, with a good deal of pride. “Stritefor’ard’s my motto, and stritefor’ard’s my behaviour, and I expect to be treated similar. Prehaps,” said Wetherell, becoming warm on a subject that seemed always to interest him, “Prehaps I should get along better in the world if I wasn’t so stritefor’ard. Prehaps I ‘ave me faults. Prehaps I’m over-trustful and too good-natured, and too willing to think well of everybody. I don’t deny it: I don’t admit it. But I’d sooner feel that I had all those faults I’ve mentioned than not talk stritefor’ard, and act stritefor’ard, and be stritefor’ard.”

Mr. Wetherell mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.

“Now,” he said, with an air of concluding the argument, “now we know where we are.”

“I must be getting off. Come on, youngster, and let me rub your mouth for you.”

The infant Highlander had eaten some of the sugared bun, and had also contrived to paste a good deal of it on his cheeks. When this had been remedied, and his costume had been shaken into something like order, Mord Em’ly rose. The Highlander ran across the avenue, kicked his friend the boatswain, and returned to sanctuary.

“Good afternoon!” she said.

“No, you don’t,” remarked Wetherell brusquely. “You ain’t going like that. Don’t you flatter yourself.”

“Not precious little to flatter myself about,” said Mord Em’ly, with a desolate sigh.

“You’re going to give me a answer, yes or no, before you go.”

“Who told you so?”

“Let’s ‘ear from you.”

She did not answer.

“You see,” he said persuasively, “if it wasn’t that this little ‘ouse was cheap, and the kind that we might ‘ave to wait monse for if we let it slip, I wouldn’t be in no ‘urry. As it is, there’s no time to lose.”

“And then, I s’pose—I s’pose we’d get married?”

“That,” said Mr. Wetherell handsomely, with a shrug of the shoulders, “is quite a matter for you to decide.”

“But people will know that we’re not—”

“People ‘ave got no call to know anything about it. If anybody passes any remarks I’ll treat ’em like I treated that feller a few weeks ago. I stood up in your defence then, if you recollect, and I can do it again.”

He fastened his scarlet neck-tie with great determination, and went on:

“Whatever we like to arrange, you and me, is a matter that only concerns ourselves, and’s got nothing at all to do with nobody else. We’re both grown-up—I’m older than you, certainly, but that only seeports my argument—and we’ve got a right to do what we’ve got a right to do. See? And as regards the servant, if she don’t do jest what you want her to do in the ‘ouse, all you’ve got to do is to give her notice in the same way that the Queen or anybody else might. You’ll ‘ave full control, in a manner of speaking.”

Mord Em’ly held tightly the hand of the small Highlander, and glanced with an absent air away over Blackheath. The place looked to her rather like a coloured picture, and the people moving about on it appeared like lazy flies. The sky was not very well painted: the deep blue seemed unnatural and exaggerated. She whistled thoughtfully.

“Stop acting the goat,” he said brusquely. “Say the word—yes or no.”

“Give me time to think over it.”

“Sha’n’t give you another minute.”

“Ah, well,” said Mord Em’ly, with a burst of recklessness, “I don’t seem to care what ‘appens to me!”

“That means yes, does it?”

“It means yes,” said Mord Em’ly.

“Permit me,” he said, taking off his soft hat. She pushed him back. “What, don’t you like kissin’?”

“I ain’t particular keen on it,” said Mord Em’ly.

“Shake ‘ands, then. Be ‘ere to-morrow same time, and we’ll settle about the ‘ouse. Only,” he said menacingly, “no droring back, mind.”

“I’ve given you my word,” she said wearily.

Mord Em’ly walked out of the gates to the heath. The youthful Highlander slipped his hand from her tight grasp, and ran back to the gates, as one remembering a duty. There the young man found a pebble, and, throwing it with an aim accidently exact, managed to hit the departing Mr. Wetherell. The young Highlander waited to see Mr. Wetherell cuff the boatswain for this act, and then returned to Mord Em’ly with the satisfaction of one who has complied with a stringent rule of etiquette.

Mr. Wetherell showed every appearance of keeping his word. More than once he took Mord Em’ly to see the outside of the house; he pointed out in the window of a furniture shop, amongst other things, a gorgeous crimson plush suite of chairs that he said were as good as being his property. Mord Em’ly, accompanied and guarded by the trusty young Highlander, went through all this rather gloomily, and brightened only when Wetherell showed her the registry office, where (he said) he had had no little difficulty in finding a suitable domestic. When Mord Em’ly made once more a suggestion of delay, Mr. Wetherell replied frankly that he would wring her neck if she mentioned it again.

Returning one afternoon, she had to pass Mitchell’s Dining-Rooms, and Miss Mitchell, over the wire blind in the window, beckoned to her. Mord Em’ly, her little head hot with weariness, decided that she could not just then endure the young lady’s company, and walked on; whereupon Miss Mitchell tripped out, and ran after her.

“A letter for you,” said Miss Mitchell breathlessly. “Why didn’t you come when I beckoned?”

“Sure it’s for me?”

“Well,” said Miss Mitchell, “it’s got your name on the envelope, if that’s anything to go by. And, I say, d’you mind giving me the foreign stamp? My young gentleman’s collecting ’em, and it’ll be a nice present for his birthday.”

Mord Em’ly opened the envelope.

“I s’pose it’s from your friend that—thanks—went out to, what’s the name of the place. I’ve often thought I should like to be engaged to some gentleman that was abroad, so as to get nice long letters from him describing the scenery, and—”

Mord Em’ly walked away suddenly, because, on reading the first words of the letter, her face had flushed a fiery crimson.

“My dear Sweetheart!”

She placed the letter hastily in her bodice, lifted the little Highlander, and, to his astonishment, kissed him and hugged him until he kicked for release. It was the first letter she had ever received that had opened with these words of affection, and for a few moments she was not quite sane. In her room she read it carefully.

“My Dear Sweetheart,”

“A few lines to tell you that we have arrived at the above place safe and sound, and we leave again in an hour’s time. It is a very strange place, and quite different from England. The foreing people are very backward compared with us. My dear Sweetheart, my employer has seen me much worried by leaving you, and he asked me the reason, and I up and told him. And he said why did not you tell me before. And he has sent to the P. and O. Office in Leadenhall Street, not far from the Mansion House, the money for a second class single ticket, and when you are ready to come out you must go there and tell them who you are, and give them the inclose note from him, and then they will tell you when to set sail. And they will telegraft out to say so, and I will meet you at Sydney, and I will marry you, and will be a good husband to you.

“It is a longish voyage, but you will soon get used to it, and find someone friendly, because everybody is very amable on board. Sometimes the steamer does not take six weeks. Sydney is the last place you come to, so you cannot miss it. The people out there all talk English, and it will not be like coming to a foreing land.

So with fond love, believe me to remain, my dear Sweetheart,

“Yours affect’ly,⁠
“Henry Barden.”

P.S.—I hope you have not forgot me.

Mord Em’ly read the letter through several times. Suddenly the glad expression on her face vanished.

“I shall ‘ave trouble with that other one,” she said nervously.