william clodd, mopping his brow, laid down the screwdriver, and stepping back, regarded the result of his labours with evident satisfaction.
“it looks like a bookcase,” said william clodd. “you might sit in the room for half an hour and never know it wasn’t a bookcase.”
what william clodd had accomplished was this: he had had prepared, after his own design, what appeared to be four shelves laden with works suggestive of thought and erudition. as a matter of fact, it was not a bookcase, but merely a flat board, the books merely the backs of volumes that had long since found their way into the paper-mill. this artful deception william clodd had screwed upon a cottage piano standing in the corner of the editorial office of good humour. half a dozen real volumes piled upon the top of the piano completed the illusion. as william clodd had proudly remarked, a casual visitor might easily have been deceived.
“if you had to sit in the room while she was practising mixed scales, you’d be quickly undeceived,” said the editor of good humour, one peter hope. he spoke bitterly.
“you are not always in,” explained clodd. “there must be hours when she is here alone, with nothing else to do. besides, you will get used to it after a while.”
“you, i notice, don’t try to get used to it,” snarled peter hope. “you always go out the moment she commences.”
“a friend of mine,” continued william clodd, “worked in an office over a piano-shop for seven years, and when the shop closed, it nearly ruined his business; couldn’t settle down to work for want of it.”
“why doesn’t he come here?” asked peter hope. “the floor above is vacant.”
“can’t,” explained william clodd. “he’s dead.”
“i can quite believe it,” commented peter hope.
“it was a shop where people came and practised, paying sixpence an hour, and he had got to like it—said it made a cheerful background to his thoughts. wonderful what you can get accustomed to.”
“what’s the good of it?” demanded peter hope.
“what’s the good of it!” retorted william clodd indignantly. “every girl ought to know how to play the piano. a nice thing if when her lover asks her to play something to him—”
“i wonder you don’t start a matrimonial agency,” sneered peter hope. “love and marriage—you think of nothing else.”
“when you are bringing up a young girl—” argued clodd.
“but you’re not,” interrupted peter; “that’s just what i’m trying to get out of your head. it is i who am bringing her up. and between ourselves, i wish you wouldn’t interfere so much.”
“you are not fit to bring up a girl.”
“i’ve brought her up for seven years without your help. she’s my adopted daughter, not yours. i do wish people would learn to mind their own business.”
“you’ve done very well—”
“thank you,” said peter hope sarcastically. “it’s very kind of you. perhaps when you’ve time, you’ll write me out a testimonial.”
“—up till now,” concluded the imperturbable clodd. “a girl of eighteen wants to know something else besides mathematics and the classics. you don’t understand them.”
“i do understand them,” asserted peter hope. “what do you know about them? you’re not a father.”
“you’ve done your best,” admitted william clodd in a tone of patronage that irritated peter greatly; “but you’re a dreamer; you don’t know the world. the time is coming when the girl will have to think of a husband.”
“there’s no need for her to think of a husband, not for years,” retorted peter hope. “and even when she does, is strumming on the piano going to help her?”
“i tink—i tink,” said dr. smith, who had hitherto remained a silent listener, “our young frent clodd is right. you haf never quite got over your idea dat she was going to be a boy. you haf taught her de tings a boy should know.”
“you cut her hair,” added clodd.
“i don’t,” snapped peter.
“you let her have it cut—it’s the same thing. at eighteen she knows more about the ancient greeks and romans than she does about her own frocks.”
“de young girl,” argued the doctor, “what is she? de flower dat makes bright for us de garden of life, de gurgling brook dat murmurs by de dusty highway, de cheerful fire—”
“she can’t be all of them,” snapped peter, who was a stickler for style. “do keep to one simile at a time.”
“now you listen to plain sense,” said william clodd. “you want—we all want—the girl to be a success all round.”
“i want her—” peter hope was rummaging among the litter on the desk. it certainly was not there. peter pulled out a drawer-two drawers. “i wish,” said peter hope, “i wish sometimes she wasn’t quite so clever.”
the old doctor rummaged among dusty files of papers in a corner. clodd found it on the mantelpiece concealed beneath the hollow foot of a big brass candlestick, and handed it to peter.
peter had one vice—the taking in increasing quantities of snuff, which was harmful for him, as he himself admitted. tommy, sympathetic to most masculine frailties, was severe, however, upon this one.
“you spill it upon your shirt and on your coat,” had argued tommy. “i like to see you always neat. besides, it isn’t a nice habit. i do wish, dad, you’d give it up.”
“i must,” peter had agreed. “i’ll break myself of it. but not all at once—it would be a wrench; by degrees, tommy, by degrees.”
so a compromise had been compounded. tommy was to hide the snuff-box. it was to be somewhere in the room and to be accessible, but that was all. peter, when self-control had reached the breaking-point, might try and find it. occasionally, luck helping peter, he would find it early in the day, when he would earn his own bitter self-reproaches by indulging in quite an orgie. but more often tommy’s artfulness was such that he would be compelled, by want of time, to abandon the search. tommy always knew when he had failed by the air of indignant resignation with which he would greet her on her return. then perhaps towards evening, peter, looking up, would see the box open before his nose, above it, a pair of reproving black eyes, their severity counterbalanced by a pair of full red lips trying not to smile. and peter, knowing that only one pinch would be permitted, would dip deeply.
“i want her,” said peter hope, feeling with his snuff-box in his hand more confidence in his own judgment, “to be a sensible, clever woman, capable of earning her own living and of being independent; not a mere helpless doll, crying for some man to come and take care of her.”
“a woman’s business,” asserted clodd, “is to be taken care of.”
“some women, perhaps,” admitted peter; “but tommy, you know very well, is not going to be the ordinary type of woman. she has brains; she will make her way in the world.”
“it doesn’t depend upon brains,” said clodd. “she hasn’t got the elbows.”
“the elbows?”
“they are not sharp enough. the last ’bus home on a wet night tells you whether a woman is capable of pushing her own way in the world. tommy’s the sort to get left on the kerb.”
“she’s the sort,” retorted peter, “to make a name for herself and to be able to afford a cab. don’t you bully me!” peter sniffed self-assertiveness from between his thumb and finger.
“yes, i shall,” clodd told him, “on this particular point. the poor girl’s got no mother.”
fortunately for the general harmony the door opened at the moment to admit the subject of discussion.
“got that daisy blossom advertisement out of old blatchley,” announced tommy, waving triumphantly a piece of paper over her head.
“no!” exclaimed peter. “how did you manage it?”
“asked him for it,” was tommy’s explanation.
“very odd,” mused peter; “asked the old idiot for it myself only last week. he refused it point-blank.”
clodd snorted reproof. “you know i don’t like your doing that sort of thing. it isn’t proper for a young girl—”
“it’s all right,” assured him tommy; “he’s bald!”
“that makes no difference,” was clodd’s opinion.
“yes it does,” was tommy’s. “i like them bald.”
tommy took peter’s head between her hands and kissed it, and in doing so noticed the tell-tale specks of snuff.
“just a pinch, my dear,” explained peter, “the merest pinch.”
tommy took up the snuff-box from the desk. “i’ll show you where i’m going to put it this time.” she put it in her pocket. peter’s face fell.
“what do you think of it?” said clodd. he led her to the corner. “good idea, ain’t it?”
“why, where’s the piano?” demanded tommy.
clodd turned in delighted triumph to the others.
“humbug!” growled peter.
“it isn’t humbug,” cried clodd indignantly. “she thought it was a bookcase—anybody would. you’ll be able to sit there and practise by the hour,” explained clodd to tommy. “when you hear anybody coming up the stairs, you can leave off.”
“how can she hear anything when she—” a bright idea occurred to peter. “don’t you think, clodd, as a practical man,” suggested peter insinuatingly, adopting the socratic method, “that if we got her one of those dummy pianos—you know what i mean; it’s just like an ordinary piano, only you don’t hear it?”
clodd shook his head. “no good at all. can’t tell the effect she is producing.”
“quite so. then, on the other hand, clodd, don’t you think that hearing the effect they are producing may sometimes discourage the beginner?”
clodd’s opinion was that such discouragement was a thing to be battled with.
tommy, who had seated herself, commenced a scale in contrary motion.
“well, i’m going across to the printer’s now,” explained clodd, taking up his hat. “got an appointment with young grindley at three. you stick to it. a spare half-hour now and then that you never miss does wonders. you’ve got it in you.” with these encouraging remarks to tommy, clodd disappeared.
“easy for him,” muttered peter bitterly. “always does have an appointment outside the moment she begins.”
tommy appeared to be throwing her very soul into the performance. passers-by in crane court paused, regarded the first-floor windows of the publishing and editorial offices of good humour with troubled looks, then hurried on.
“she has—remarkably firm douch!” shouted the doctor into peter’s ear. “will see you—evening. someting—say to you.”
the fat little doctor took his hat and departed. tommy, ceasing suddenly, came over and seated herself on the arm of peter’s chair.
“feeling grumpy?” asked tommy.
“it isn’t,” explained peter, “that i mind the noise. i’d put up with that if i could see the good of it.”
“it’s going to help me to get a husband, dad. seems to me an odd way of doing it; but billy says so, and billy knows all about everything.”
“i can’t understand you, a sensible girl, listening to such nonsense,” said peter. “it’s that that troubles me.”
“dad, where are your wits?” demanded tommy. “isn’t billy acting like a brick? why, he could go into fleet street to half a dozen other papers and make five hundred a year as advertising-agent—you know he could. but he doesn’t. he sticks to us. if my making myself ridiculous with that tin pot they persuaded him was a piano is going to please him, isn’t it common sense and sound business, to say nothing of good nature and gratitude, for me to do it? dad, i’ve got a surprise for him. listen.” and tommy, springing from the arm of peter’s chair, returned to the piano.
“what was it?” questioned tommy, having finished. “could you recognise it?”
“i think,” said peter, “it sounded like—it wasn’t ‘home, sweet home,’ was it?”
tommy clapped her hands. “yes, it was. you’ll end by liking it yourself, dad. we’ll have musical ‘at homes.’”
“tommy, have i brought you up properly, do you think?”
“no dad, you haven’t. you have let me have my own way too much. you know the proverb: ‘good mothers make bad daughters.’ clodd’s right; you’ve spoilt me, dad. do you remember, dad, when i first came to you, seven years ago, a ragged little brat out of the streets, that didn’t know itself whether ’twas a boy or a girl? do you know what i thought to myself the moment i set eyes on you? ‘here’s a soft old juggins; i’ll be all right if i can get in here!’ it makes you smart, knocking about in the gutters and being knocked about; you read faces quickly.”
“do you remember your cooking, tommy? you ‘had an aptitude for it,’ according to your own idea.”
tommy laughed. “i wonder how you stood it.”
“you were so obstinate. you came to me as ‘cook and housekeeper,’ and as cook and housekeeper, and as nothing else, would you remain. if i suggested any change, up would go your chin into the air. i dared not even dine out too often, you were such a little tyrant. the only thing you were always ready to do, if i wasn’t satisfied, was to march out of the house and leave me. wherever did you get that savage independence of yours?”
“i don’t know. i think it must have been from a woman—perhaps she was my mother; i don’t know—who used to sit up in the bed and cough, all night it seemed to me. people would come to see us—ladies in fine clothes, and gentlemen with oily hair. i think they wanted to help us. many of them had kind voices. but always a hard look would come into her face, and she would tell them what even then i knew to be untrue—it was one of the first things i can recollect—that we had everything we wanted, that we needed no help from anyone. they would go away, shrugging their shoulders. i grew up with the feeling that seemed to have been burnt into my brain, that to take from anybody anything you had not earned was shameful. i don’t think i could do it even now, not even from you. i am useful to you, dad—i do help you?”
there had crept a terror into tommy’s voice. peter felt the little hands upon his arm trembling.
“help me? why, you work like a nigger—like a nigger is supposed to work, but doesn’t. no one—whatever we paid him—would do half as much. i don’t want to make your head more swollen than it is, young woman, but you have talent; i am not sure it is not genius.” peter felt the little hands tighten upon his arm.
“i do want this paper to be a success; that is why i strum upon the piano to please clodd. is it humbug?”
“i am afraid it is; but humbug is the sweet oil that helps this whirling world of ours to spin round smoothly. too much of it cloys: we drop it very gently.”
“but you are sure it is only humbug, tommy?” it was peter’s voice into which fear had entered now. “it is not that you think he understands you better than i do—would do more for you?”
“you want me to tell you all i think of you, and that isn’t good for you, dad—not too often. it would be you who would have swelled head then.”
“i am jealous, tommy, jealous of everyone that comes near you. life is a tragedy for us old folks. we know there must come a day when you will leave the nest, leave us voiceless, ridiculous, flitting among bare branches. you will understand later, when you have children of your own. this foolish talk about a husband! it is worse for a man than it is for the woman. the mother lives again in her child: the man is robbed of all.”
“dad, do you know how old i am?—that you are talking terrible nonsense?”
“he will come, little girl.”
“yes,” answered tommy, “i suppose he will; but not for a long while—oh, not for a very long while. don’t. it frightens me.”
“you? why should it frighten you?”
“the pain. it makes me feel a coward. i want it to come; i want to taste life, to drain the whole cup, to understand, to feel. but that is the boy in me. i am more than half a boy, i always have been. but the woman in me: it shrinks from the ordeal.”
“you talk, tommy, as if love were something terrible.”
“there are all things in it; i feel it, dad. it is life in a single draught. it frightens me.”
the child was standing with her face hidden behind her hands. old peter, always very bad at lying, stood silent, not knowing what consolation to concoct. the shadow passed, and tommy’s laughing eyes looked out again.
“haven’t you anything to do, dad—outside, i mean?”
“you want to get rid of me?”
“well, i’ve nothing else to occupy me till the proofs come in. i’m going to practise, hard.”
“i think i’ll turn over my article on the embankment,” said peter.
“there’s one thing you all of you ought to be grateful to me for,” laughed tommy, as she seated herself at the piano. “i do induce you all to take more fresh air than otherwise you would.”
tommy, left alone, set herself to her task with the energy and thoroughness that were characteristic of her. struggling with complicated scales, tommy bent her eyes closer and closer over the pages of czerny’s exercises. glancing up to turn a page, tommy, to her surprise, met the eyes of a stranger. they were brown eyes, their expression sympathetic. below them, looking golden with the sunlight falling on it, was a moustache and beard cut short in vandyke fashion, not altogether hiding a pleasant mouth, about the corners of which lurked a smile.
“i beg your pardon,” said the stranger. “i knocked three times. perhaps you did not hear me?”
“no, i didn’t,” confessed tommy, closing the book of czerny’s exercises, and rising with chin at an angle that, to anyone acquainted with the chart of tommy’s temperament, might have suggested the advisability of seeking shelter.
“this is the editorial office of good humour, is it not?” inquired the stranger.
“it is.”
“is the editor in?”
“the editor is out.”
“the sub-editor?” suggested the stranger.
“i am the sub-editor.”
the stranger raised his eyebrows. tommy, on the contrary, lowered hers.
“would you mind glancing through that?” the stranger drew from his pocket a folded manuscript. “it will not take you a moment. i ought, of course, to have sent it through the post; but i am so tired of sending things through the post.”
the stranger’s manner was compounded of dignified impudence combined with pathetic humility. his eyes both challenged and pleaded. tommy held out her hand for the paper and retired with it behind the protection of the big editorial desk that, flanked on one side by a screen and on the other by a formidable revolving bookcase, stretched fortress-like across the narrow room. the stranger remained standing.
“yes. it’s pretty,” criticised the sub-editor. “worth printing, perhaps, not worth paying for.”
“not merely a—a nominal sum, sufficient to distinguish it from the work of the amateur?”
tommy pursed her lips. “poetry is quite a drug in the market. we can get as much as we want of it for nothing.”
“say half a crown,” suggested the stranger.
tommy shot a swift glance across the desk, and for the first time saw the whole of him. he was clad in a threadbare, long, brown ulster—long, that is, it would have been upon an ordinary man, but the stranger happening to be remarkably tall, it appeared on him ridiculously short, reaching only to his knees. round his neck and tucked into his waistcoat, thus completely hiding the shirt and collar he may have been wearing or may not, was carefully arranged a blue silk muffler. his hands, which were bare, looked blue and cold. yet the black frock-coat and waistcoat and french grey trousers bore the unmistakable cut of a first-class tailor and fitted him to perfection. his hat, which he had rested on the desk, shone resplendent, and the handle of his silk umbrella was an eagle’s head in gold, with two small rubies for the eyes.
“you can leave it if you like,” consented tommy. “i’ll speak to the editor about it when he returns.”
“you won’t forget it?” urged the stranger.
“no,” answered tommy. “i shall not forget it.”
her black eyes were fixed upon the stranger without her being aware of it. she had dropped unconsciously into her “stocktaking” attitude.
“thank you very much,” said the stranger. “i will call again to-morrow.”
the stranger, moving backward to the door, went out.
tommy sat with her face between her hands. czerny’s exercises lay neglected.
“anybody called?” asked peter hope.
“no,” answered tommy. “oh, just a man. left this—not bad.”
“the old story,” mused peter, as he unfolded the manuscript. “we all of us begin with poetry. then we take to prose romances; poetry doesn’t pay. finally, we write articles: ‘how to be happy though married,’ ‘what shall we do with our daughters?’ it is life summarised. what is it all about?”
“oh, the usual sort of thing,” explained tommy. “he wants half a crown for it.”
“poor devil! let him have it.”
“that’s not business,” growled tommy.
“nobody will ever know,” said peter. “we’ll enter it as ‘telegrams.’”
the stranger called early the next day, pocketed his half-crown, and left another manuscript—an essay. also he left behind him his gold-handled umbrella, taking away with him instead an old alpaca thing clodd kept in reserve for exceptionally dirty weather. peter pronounced the essay usable.
“he has a style,” said peter; “he writes with distinction. make an appointment for me with him.”
clodd, on missing his umbrella, was indignant.
“what’s the good of this thing to me?” commented clodd. “sort of thing for a dude in a pantomime! the fellow must be a blithering ass!”
tommy gave to the stranger messages from both when next he called. he appeared more grieved than surprised concerning the umbrellas.
“you don’t think mr. clodd would like to keep this umbrella in exchange for his own?” he suggested.
for dick danvers, that he did not recognise flipp, there was more excuse. a very old young man had flipp become at thirty. flipp no longer enjoyed popular journalism. he produced it.
the gold-bound doorkeeper feared the mighty clodd would be unable to see so insignificant an atom as an unappointed stranger, but would let the card of mr. richard danvers plead for itself. to the gold-bound keeper’s surprise came down the message that mr. danvers was to be at once shown up.
“i thought, somehow, you would come to me first,” said the portly clodd, advancing with out-stretched hand. “and this is—?”
“my little girl, honor. we have been travelling for the last few months.”
clodd took the grave, small face between his big, rough hands:
“yes. she is like you. but looks as if she were going to have more sense. forgive me, i knew your father my dear,” laughed clodd; “when he was younger.”
they lit their cigars and talked.
“well, not exactly dead; we amalgamated it,” winked clodd in answer to danvers’ inquiry. “it was just a trifle too high-class. besides, the old gentleman was not getting younger. it hurt him a little at first. but then came tommy’s great success, and that has reconciled him to all things. do they know you are in england?”
“no,” explained danvers; “we arrived only last night.”
clodd called directions down the speaking-tube.
“you will find hardly any change in her. one still has to keep one’s eye upon her chin. she has not even lost her old habit of taking stock of people. you remember.” clodd laughed.
they talked a little longer, till there came a whistle, and clodd put his ear to the tube.
“i have to see her on business,” said clodd, rising; “you may as well come with me. they are still in the old place, gough square.”
tommy was out, but peter was expecting her every minute.
peter did not know dick, but would not admit it. forgetfulness was a sign of age, and peter still felt young.
“i know your face quite well,” said peter; “can’t put a name to it, that’s all.”
clodd whispered it to him, together with information bringing history up to date. and then light fell upon the old lined face. he came towards dick, meaning to take him by both hands, but, perhaps because he had become somewhat feeble, he seemed glad when the younger man put his arms around him and held him for a moment. it was un-english, and both of them felt a little ashamed of themselves afterwards.
“what we want,” said clodd, addressing peter, “we three—you, i, and miss danvers—is tea and cakes, with cream in them; and i know a shop where they sell them. we will call back for your father in half an hour.” clodd explained to miss danvers; “he has to talk over a matter of business with miss hope.”
“i know,” answered the grave-faced little person. she drew dick’s face down to hers and kissed it. and then the three went out together, leaving dick standing by the window.
“couldn’t we hide somewhere till she comes?” suggested miss danvers. “i want to see her.”
so they waited in the open doorway of a near printing-house till tommy drove up. both peter and clodd watched the child’s face with some anxiety. she nodded gravely to herself three times, then slipped her hand into peter’s.
tommy opened the door with her latchkey and passed in.
