LXXXV
About a fortnight after this Philip, going home one evening after his day’s work at the hospital, knocked at the door of Cronshaw’s room. He got no answer and walked in. Cronshaw was lying huddled up on one side, and Philip went up to the bed. He did not know whether Cronshaw was asleep or merely lay there in one of his uncontrollable fits of irritability. He was surprised to see that his mouth was open. He touched his shoulder. Philip gave a cry of dismay. He slipped his hand under Cronshaw’s shirt and felt his heart; he did not know what to do; helplessly, because he had heard of this being done, he held a looking-glass in front of his mouth. It startled him to be alone with Cronshaw. He had his hat and coat still on, and he ran down the stairs into the street; he hailed a cab and drove to Harley Street. Dr. Tyrell was in.
“I say, would you mind coming at once? I think Cronshaw’s dead.”
“If he is it’s not much good my coming, is it?”
“I should be awfully grateful if you would. I’ve got a cab at the door. It’ll only take half an hour.”
Tyrell put on his hat. In the cab he asked him one or two questions.
“He seemed no worse than usual when I left this morning,” said Philip. “It gave me an awful shock when I went in just now. And the thought of his dying all alone…. D’you think he knew he was going to die?”
Philip remembered what Cronshaw had said. He wondered whether at that last moment he had been seized with the terror of death. Philip imagined himself in such a plight, knowing it was inevitable and with no one, not a soul, to give an encouraging word when the fear seized him.
“You’re rather upset,” said Dr. Tyrell.
He looked at him with his bright blue eyes. They were not unsympathetic. When he saw Cronshaw, he said:
“He must have been dead for some hours. I should think he died in his sleep. They do sometimes.”
The body looked shrunk and ignoble. It was not like anything human. Dr. Tyrell looked at it dispassionately. With a mechanical gesture he took out his watch.
“Well, I must be getting along. I’ll send the certificate round. I suppose you’ll communicate with the relatives.”
“I don’t think there are any,” said Philip.
“How about the funeral?”
“Oh, I’ll see to that.”
Dr. Tyrell gave Philip a glance. He wondered whether he ought to offer a couple of sovereigns towards it. He knew nothing of Philip’s circumstances; perhaps he could well afford the expense; Philip might think it impertinent if he made any suggestion.
“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he said.
Philip and he went out together, parting on the doorstep, and Philip went to a telegraph office in order to send a message to Leonard Upjohn. Then he went to an undertaker whose shop he passed every day on his way to the hospital. His attention had been drawn to it often by the three words in silver lettering on a black cloth, which, with two model coffins, adorned the window: Economy, Celerity, Propriety. They had always diverted him. The undertaker was a little fat Jew with curly black hair, long and greasy, in black, with a large diamond ring on a podgy finger. He received Philip with a peculiar manner formed by the mingling of his natural blatancy with the subdued air proper to his calling. He quickly saw that Philip was very helpless and promised to send round a woman at once to perform the needful offices. His suggestions for the funeral were very magnificent; and Philip felt ashamed of himself when the undertaker seemed to think his objections mean. It was horrible to haggle on such a matter, and finally Philip consented to an expensiveness which he could ill afford.
“I quite understand, sir,” said the undertaker, “you don’t want any show and that I’m not a believer in ostentation myself, mind you but you want it done gentlemanly-like. You leave it to me, I’ll do it as cheap as it can be done, ’aving regard to what’s right and proper. I can’t say more than that, can I?”
Philip went home to eat his supper, and while he ate the woman came along to lay out the corpse. Presently a telegram arrived from Leonard Upjohn.
Shocked and grieved beyond measure. Regret cannot come tonight. Dining out. With you early tomorrow. Deepest sympathy. Upjohn.
In a little while the woman knocked at the door of the sitting-room.
“I’ve done now, sir. Will you come and look at ’im and see it’s all right?”
Philip followed her. Cronshaw was lying on his back, with his eyes closed and his hands folded piously across his chest.
“You ought by rights to ’ave a few flowers, sir.”
“I’ll get some tomorrow.”
She gave the body a glance of satisfaction. She had performed her job, and now she rolled down her sleeves, took off her apron, and put on her bonnet. Philip asked her how much he owed her.
“Well, sir, some give me two and sixpence and some give me five shillings.”
Philip was ashamed to give her less than the larger sum. She thanked him with just so much effusiveness as was seemly in presence of the grief he might be supposed to feel, and left him. Philip went back into his sitting-room, cleared away the remains of his supper, and sat down to read Walsham’s Surgery. He found it difficult. He felt singularly nervous. When there was a sound on the stairs he jumped, and his heart beat violently. That thing in the adjoining room, which had been a man and now was nothing, frightened him. The silence seemed alive, as if some mysterious movement were taking place within it; the presence of death weighed upon these rooms, unearthly and terrifying: Philip felt a sudden horror for what had once been his friend. He tried to force himself to read, but presently pushed away his book in despair. What troubled him was the absolute futility of the life which had just ended. It did not matter if Cronshaw was alive or dead. It would have been just as well if he had never lived. Philip thought of Cronshaw young; and it needed an effort of imagination to picture him slender, with a springing step, and with hair on his head, buoyant and hopeful. Philip’s rule of life, to follow one’s instincts with due regard to the policeman round the corner, had not acted very well there: it was because Cronshaw had done this that he had made such a lamentable failure of existence. It seemed that the instincts could not be trusted. Philip was puzzled, and he asked himself what rule of life was there, if that one was useless, and why people acted in one way rather than in another. They acted according to their emotions, but their emotions might be good or bad; it seemed just a chance whether they led to triumph or disaster. Life seemed an inextricable confusion. Men hurried hither and thither, urged by forces they knew not; and the purpose of it all escaped them; they seemed to hurry just for hurrying’s sake.
Next morning Leonard Upjohn appeared with a small wreath of laurel. He was pleased with his idea of crowning the dead poet with this; and attempted, notwithstanding Philip’s disapproving silence, to fix it on the bald head; but the wreath fitted grotesquely. It looked like the brim of a hat worn by a low comedian in a music-hall.
“I’ll put it over his heart instead,” said Upjohn.
“You’ve put it on his stomach,” remarked Philip.
Upjohn gave a thin smile.
“Only a poet knows where lies a poet’s heart,” he answered.
They went back into the sitting-room, and Philip told him what arrangements he had made for the funeral.
“I hoped you’ve spared no expense. I should like the hearse to be followed by a long string of empty coaches, and I should like the horses to wear tall nodding plumes, and there should be a vast number of mutes with long streamers on their hats. I like the thought of all those empty coaches.”
“As the cost of the funeral will apparently fall on me and I’m not over flush just now, I’ve tried to make it as moderate as possible.”
“But, my dear fellow, in that case, why didn’t you get him a pauper’s funeral? There would have been something poetic in that. You have an unerring instinct for mediocrity.”
Philip flushed a little, but did not answer; and next day he and Upjohn followed the hearse in the one carriage which Philip had ordered. Lawson, unable to come, had sent a wreath; and Philip, so that the coffin should not seem too neglected, had bought a couple. On the way back the coachman whipped up his horses. Philip was dog-tired and presently went to sleep. He was awakened by Upjohn’s voice.
“It’s rather lucky the poems haven’t come out yet. I think we’d better hold them back a bit and I’ll write a preface. I began thinking of it during the drive to the cemetery. I believe I can do something rather good. Anyhow I’ll start with an article in The Saturday.”
Philip did not reply, and there was silence between them. At last Upjohn said:
“I daresay I’d be wiser not to whittle away my copy. I think I’ll do an article for one of the reviews, and then I can just print it afterwards as a preface.”
Philip kept his eye on the monthlies, and a few weeks later it appeared. The article made something of a stir, and extracts from it were printed in many of the papers. It was a very good article, vaguely biographical, for no one knew much of Cronshaw’s early life, but delicate, tender, and picturesque. Leonard Upjohn in his intricate style drew graceful little pictures of Cronshaw in the Latin Quarter, talking, writing poetry: Cronshaw became a picturesque figure, an English Verlaine; and Leonard Upjohn’s coloured phrases took on a tremulous dignity, a more pathetic grandiloquence, as he described the sordid end, the shabby little room in Soho; and, with a reticence which was wholly charming and suggested a much greater generosity than modesty allowed him to state, the efforts he made to transport the Poet to some cottage embowered with honeysuckle amid a flowering orchard. And the lack of sympathy, well-meaning but so tactless, which had taken the poet instead to the vulgar respectability of Kennington! Leonard Upjohn described Kennington with that restrained humour which a strict adherence to the vocabulary of Sir Thomas Browne necessitated. With delicate sarcasm he narrated the last weeks, the patience with which Cronshaw bore the well-meaning clumsiness of the young student who had appointed himself his nurse, and the pitifulness of that divine vagabond in those hopelessly middle-class surroundings. Beauty from ashes, he quoted from Isaiah. It was a triumph of irony for that outcast poet to die amid the trappings of vulgar respectability; it reminded Leonard Upjohn of Christ among the Pharisees, and the analogy gave him opportunity for an exquisite passage. And then he told how a friend his good taste did not suffer him more than to hint subtly who the friend was with such gracious fancies had laid a laurel wreath on the dead poet’s heart; and the beautiful dead hands had seemed to rest with a voluptuous passion upon Apollo’s leaves, fragrant with the fragrance of art, and more green than jade brought by swart mariners from the manifold, inexplicable China. And, an admirable contrast, the article ended with a description of the middle-class, ordinary, prosaic funeral of him who should have been buried like a prince or like a pauper. It was the crowning buffet, the final victory of Philistia over art, beauty, and immaterial things.
Leonard Upjohn had never written anything better. It was a miracle of charm, grace, and pity. He printed all Cronshaw’s best poems in the course of the article, so that when the volume appeared much of its point was gone; but he advanced his own position a good deal. He was thenceforth a critic to be reckoned with. He had seemed before a little aloof; but there was a warm humanity about this article which was infinitely attractive.
LXXXVI
In the spring Philip, having finished his dressing in the out-patients’ department, became an in-patients’ clerk. This appointment lasted six months. The clerk spent every morning in the wards, first in the men’s, then in the women’s, with the house-physician; he wrote up cases, made tests, and passed the time of day with the nurses. On two afternoons a week the physician in charge went round with a little knot of students, examined the cases, and dispensed information. The work had not the excitement, the constant change, the intimate contact with reality, of the work in the out-patients’ department; but Philip picked up a good deal of knowledge. He got on very well with the patients, and he was a little flattered at the pleasure they showed in his attendance on them. He was not conscious of any deep sympathy in their sufferings, but he liked them; and because he put on no airs he was more popular with them than others of the clerks. He was pleasant, encouraging, and friendly. Like everyone connected with hospitals he found that male patients were more easy to get on with than female. The women were often querulous and ill-tempered. They complained bitterly of the hard-worked nurses, who did not show them the attention they thought their right; and they were troublesome, ungrateful, and rude.
Presently Philip was fortunate enough to make a friend. One morning the house-physician gave him a new case, a man; and, seating himself at the bedside, Philip proceeded to write down particulars on the ‘letter.’ He noticed on looking at this that the patient was described as a journalist: his name was Thorpe Athelny, an unusual one for a hospital patient, and his age was forty-eight. He was suffering from a sharp attack of jaundice, and had been taken into the ward on account of obscure symptoms which it seemed necessary to watch. He answered the various questions which it was Philip’s duty to ask him in a pleasant, educated voice. Since he was lying in bed it was difficult to tell if he was short or tall, but his small head and small hands suggested that he was a man of less than average height. Philip had the habit of looking at people’s hands, and Athelny’s astonished him: they were very small, with long, tapering fingers and beautiful, rosy finger-nails; they were very smooth and except for the jaundice would have been of a surprising whiteness. The patient kept them outside the bed-clothes, one of them slightly spread out, the second and third fingers together, and, while he spoke to Philip, seemed to contemplate them with satisfaction. With a twinkle in his eyes Philip glanced at the man’s face. Notwithstanding the yellowness it was distinguished; he had blue eyes, a nose of an imposing boldness, hooked, aggressive but not clumsy, and a small beard, pointed and gray: he was rather bald, but his hair had evidently been quite fine, curling prettily, and he still wore it long.
“I see you’re a journalist,” said Philip. “What papers d’you write for?”
“I write for all the papers. You cannot open a paper without seeing some of my writing.” There was one by the side of the bed and reaching for it he pointed out an advertisement. In large letters was the name of a firm well-known to Philip, Lynn and Sedley, Regent Street, London; and below, in type smaller but still of some magnitude, was the dogmatic statement: Procrastination is the Thief of Time. Then a question, startling because of its reasonableness: Why not order today? There was a repetition, in large letters, like the hammering of conscience on a murderer’s heart: Why not? Then, boldly: Thousands of pairs of gloves from the leading markets of the world at astounding prices. Thousands of pairs of stockings from the most reliable manufacturers of the universe at sensational reductions. Finally the question recurred, but flung now like a challenging gauntlet in the lists: Why not order today?
“I’m the press representative of Lynn and Sedley.” He gave a little wave of his beautiful hand. “To what base uses…”
Philip went on asking the regulation questions, some a mere matter of routine, others artfully devised to lead the patient to discover things which he might be expected to desire to conceal.
“Have you ever lived abroad?” asked Philip.
“I was in Spain for eleven years.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was secretary of the English water company at Toledo.”
Philip remembered that Clutton had spent some months in Toledo, and the journalist’s answer made him look at him with more interest; but he felt it would be improper to show this: it was necessary to preserve the distance between the hospital patient and the staff. When he had finished his examination he went on to other beds.
Thorpe Athelny’s illness was not grave, and, though remaining very yellow, he soon felt much better: he stayed in bed only because the physician thought he should be kept under observation till certain reactions became normal. One day, on entering the ward, Philip noticed that Athelny, pencil in hand, was reading a book. He put it down when Philip came to his bed.
“May I see what you’re reading?” asked Philip, who could never pass a book without looking at it.
Philip took it up and saw that it was a volume of Spanish verse, the poems of San Juan de la Cruz, and as he opened it a sheet of paper fell out. Philip picked it up and noticed that verse was written upon it.
“You’re not going to tell me you’ve been occupying your leisure in writing poetry? That’s a most improper proceeding in a hospital patient.”
“I was trying to do some translations. D’you know Spanish?”
“No.”
“Well, you know all about San Juan de la Cruz, don’t you?”
“I don’t indeed.”
“He was one of the Spanish mystics. He’s one of the best poets they’ve ever had. I thought it would be worth while translating him into English.”
“May I look at your translation?”
“It’s very rough,” said Athelny, but he gave it to Philip with an alacrity which suggested that he was eager for him to read it.
It was written in pencil, in a fine but very peculiar handwriting, which was hard to read: it was just like black letter.
“Doesn’t it take you an awful time to write like that? It’s wonderful.”
“I don’t know why handwriting shouldn’t be beautiful.” Philip read the first verse:
In an obscure night With anxious love inflamed O happy lot! Forth unobserved I went, My house being now at rest…
Philip looked curiously at Thorpe Athelny. He did not know whether he felt a little shy with him or was attracted by him. He was conscious that his manner had been slightly patronising, and he flushed as it struck him that Athelny might have thought him ridiculous.
“What an unusual name you’ve got,” he remarked, for something to say.
“It’s a very old Yorkshire name. Once it took the head of my family a day’s hard riding to make the circuit of his estates, but the mighty are fallen. Fast women and slow horses.”
He was short-sighted and when he spoke looked at you with a peculiar intensity. He took up his volume of poetry.
“You should read Spanish,” he said. “It is a noble tongue. It has not the mellifluousness of Italian, Italian is the language of tenors and organ-grinders, but it has grandeur: it does not ripple like a brook in a garden, but it surges tumultuous like a mighty river in flood.”
His grandiloquence amused Philip, but he was sensitive to rhetoric; and he listened with pleasure while Athelny, with picturesque expressions and the fire of a real enthusiasm, described to him the rich delight of reading Don Quixote in the original and the music, romantic, limpid, passionate, of the enchanting Calderon.
“I must get on with my work,” said Philip presently.
“Oh, forgive me, I forgot. I will tell my wife to bring me a photograph of Toledo, and I will show it you. Come and talk to me when you have the chance. You don’t know what a pleasure it gives me.”
During the next few days, in moments snatched whenever there was opportunity, Philip’s acquaintance with the journalist increased. Thorpe Athelny was a good talker. He did not say brilliant things, but he talked inspiringly, with an eager vividness which fired the imagination; Philip, living so much in a world of make-believe, found his fancy teeming with new pictures. Athelny had very good manners. He knew much more than Philip, both of the world and of books; he was a much older man; and the readiness of his conversation gave him a certain superiority; but he was in the hospital a recipient of charity, subject to strict rules; and he held himself between the two positions with ease and humour. Once Philip asked him why he had come to the hospital.
“Oh, my principle is to profit by all the benefits that society provides. I take advantage of the age I live in. When I’m ill I get myself patched up in a hospital and I have no false shame, and I send my children to be educated at the board-school.”
“Do you really?” said Philip.
“And a capital education they get too, much better than I got at Winchester. How else do you think I could educate them at all? I’ve got nine. You must come and see them all when I get home again. Will you?”
“I’d like to very much,” said Philip.
LXXXVII
Ten days later Thorpe Athelny was well enough to leave the hospital. He gave Philip his address, and Philip promised to dine with him at one o’clock on the following Sunday. Athelny had told him that he lived in a house built by Inigo Jones; he had raved, as he raved over everything, over the balustrade of old oak; and when he came down to open the door for Philip he made him at once admire the elegant carving of the lintel. It was a shabby house, badly needing a coat of paint, but with the dignity of its period, in a little street between Chancery Lane and Holborn, which had once been fashionable but was now little better than a slum: there was a plan to pull it down in order to put up handsome offices; meanwhile the rents were small, and Athelny was able to get the two upper floors at a price which suited his income. Philip had not seen him up before and was surprised at his small size; he was not more than five feet and five inches high. He was dressed fantastically in blue linen trousers of the sort worn by working men in France, and a very old brown velvet coat; he wore a bright red sash round his waist, a low collar, and for tie a flowing bow of the kind used by the comic Frenchman in the pages of Punch. He greeted Philip with enthusiasm. He began talking at once of the house and passed his hand lovingly over the balusters.
“Look at it, feel it, it’s like silk. What a miracle of grace! And in five years the house-breaker will sell it for firewood.”
He insisted on taking Philip into a room on the first floor, where a man in shirt sleeves, a blousy woman, and three children were having their Sunday dinner.
“I’ve just brought this gentleman in to show him your ceiling. Did you ever see anything so wonderful? How are you, Mrs. Hodgson? This is Mr. Carey, who looked after me when I was in the hospital.”
“Come in, sir,” said the man. “Any friend of Mr. Athelny’s is welcome. Mr. Athelny shows the ceiling to all his friends. And it don’t matter what we’re doing, if we’re in bed or if I’m ’aving a wash, in ’e comes.”
Philip could see that they looked upon Athelny as a little queer; but they liked him none the less and they listened open-mouthed while he discoursed with his impetuous fluency on the beauty of the seventeenth-century ceiling.
“What a crime to pull this down, eh, Hodgson? You’re an influential citizen, why don’t you write to the papers and protest?”
The man in shirt sleeves gave a laugh and said to Philip:
“Mr. Athelny will ’ave his little joke. They do say these ’ouses are that insanitory, it’s not safe to live in them.”
“Sanitation be damned, give me art,” cried Athelny. “I’ve got nine children and they thrive on bad drains. No, no, I’m not going to take any risk. None of your new-fangled notions for me! When I move from here I’m going to make sure the drains are bad before I take anything.”
There was a knock at the door, and a little fair-haired girl opened it.
“Daddy, mummy says, do stop talking and come and eat your dinner.”
“This is my third daughter,” said Athelny, pointing to her with a dramatic forefinger. “She is called Maria del Pilar, but she answers more willingly to the name of Jane. Jane, your nose wants blowing.”
“I haven’t got a hanky, daddy.”
“Tut, tut, child,” he answered, as he produced a vast, brilliant bandanna, “what do you suppose the Almighty gave you fingers for?”
They went upstairs, and Philip was taken into a room with walls panelled in dark oak. In the middle was a narrow table of teak on trestle legs, with two supporting bars of iron, of the kind called in Spain mesa de hieraje. They were to dine there, for two places were laid, and there were two large arm-chairs, with broad flat arms of oak and leathern backs, and leathern seats. They were severe, elegant, and uncomfortable. The only other piece of furniture was a bargueno, elaborately ornamented with gilt iron-work, on a stand of ecclesiastical design roughly but very finely carved. There stood on this two or three lustre plates, much broken but rich in colour; and on the walls were old masters of the Spanish school in beautiful though dilapidated frames: though gruesome in subject, ruined by age and bad treatment, and second-rate in their conception, they had a glow of passion. There was nothing in the room of any value, but the effect was lovely. It was magnificent and yet austere. Philip felt that it offered the very spirit of old Spain. Athelny was in the middle of showing him the inside of the bargueno, with its beautiful ornamentation and secret drawers, when a tall girl, with two plaits of bright brown hair hanging down her back, came in.
“Mother says dinner’s ready and waiting and I’m to bring it in as soon as you sit down.”
“Come and shake hands with Mr. Carey, Sally.” He turned to Philip. “Isn’t she enormous? She’s my eldest. How old are you, Sally?”
“Fifteen, father, come next June.”
“I christened her Maria del Sol, because she was my first child and I dedicated her to the glorious sun of Castile; but her mother calls her Sally and her brother Pudding-Face.”
The girl smiled shyly, she had even, white teeth, and blushed. She was well set-up, tall for her age, with pleasant gray eyes and a broad forehead. She had red cheeks.
“Go and tell your mother to come in and shake hands with Mr. Carey before he sits down.”
“Mother says she’ll come in after dinner. She hasn’t washed herself yet.”
“Then we’ll go in and see her ourselves. He mustn’t eat the Yorkshire pudding till he’s shaken the hand that made it.”
Philip followed his host into the kitchen. It was small and much overcrowded. There had been a lot of noise, but it stopped as soon as the stranger entered. There was a large table in the middle and round it, eager for dinner, were seated Athelny’s children. A woman was standing at the oven, taking out baked potatoes one by one.
“Here’s Mr. Carey, Betty,” said Athelny.
“Fancy bringing him in here. What will he think?”
She wore a dirty apron, and the sleeves of her cotton dress were turned up above her elbows; she had curling pins in her hair. Mrs. Athelny was a large woman, a good three inches taller than her husband, fair, with blue eyes and a kindly expression; she had been a handsome creature, but advancing years and the bearing of many children had made her fat and blousy; her blue eyes had become pale, her skin was coarse and red, the colour had gone out of her hair. She straightened herself, wiped her hand on her apron, and held it out.
“You’re welcome, sir,” she said, in a slow voice, with an accent that seemed oddly familiar to Philip. “Athelny said you was very kind to him in the ’orspital.”
“Now you must be introduced to the live stock,” said Athelny. “That is Thorpe,” he pointed to a chubby boy with curly hair, “he is my eldest son, heir to the title, estates, and responsibilities of the family. There is Athelstan, Harold, Edward.” He pointed with his forefinger to three smaller boys, all rosy, healthy, and smiling, though when they felt Philip’s smiling eyes upon them they looked shyly down at their plates. “Now the girls in order: Maria del Sol…”
“Pudding-Face,” said one of the small boys.
“Your sense of humour is rudimentary, my son. Maria de los Mercedes, Maria del Pilar, Maria de la Concepcion, Maria del Rosario.”
“I call them Sally, Molly, Connie, Rosie, and Jane,” said Mrs. Athelny. “Now, Athelny, you go into your own room and I’ll send you your dinner. I’ll let the children come in afterwards for a bit when I’ve washed them.”
“My dear, if I’d had the naming of you I should have called you Maria of the Soapsuds. You’re always torturing these wretched brats with soap.”
“You go first, Mr. Carey, or I shall never get him to sit down and eat his dinner.”
Athelny and Philip installed themselves in the great monkish chairs, and Sally brought them in two plates of beef, Yorkshire pudding, baked potatoes, and cabbage. Athelny took sixpence out of his pocket and sent her for a jug of beer.
“I hope you didn’t have the table laid here on my account,” said Philip. “I should have been quite happy to eat with the children.”
“Oh no, I always have my meals by myself. I like these antique customs. I don’t think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I’m sure it’s very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas.”
Both host and guest ate with a hearty appetite.
“Did you ever taste such Yorkshire pudding? No one can make it like my wife. That’s the advantage of not marrying a lady. You noticed she wasn’t a lady, didn’t you?”
It was an awkward question, and Philip did not know how to answer it.
“I never thought about it,” he said lamely.
Athelny laughed. He had a peculiarly joyous laugh.
“No, she’s not a lady, nor anything like it. Her father was a farmer, and she’s never bothered about aitches in her life. We’ve had twelve children and nine of them are alive. I tell her it’s about time she stopped, but she’s an obstinate woman, she’s got into the habit of it now, and I don’t believe she’ll be satisfied till she’s had twenty.”
At that moment Sally came in with the beer, and, having poured out a glass for Philip, went to the other side of the table to pour some out for her father. He put his hand round her waist.
“Did you ever see such a handsome, strapping girl? Only fifteen and she might be twenty. Look at her cheeks. She’s never had a day’s illness in her life. It’ll be a lucky man who marries her, won’t it, Sally?”
Sally listened to all this with a slight, slow smile, not much embarrassed, for she was accustomed to her father’s outbursts, but with an easy modesty which was very attractive.
“Don’t let your dinner get cold, father,” she said, drawing herself away from his arm. “You’ll call when you’re ready for your pudding, won’t you?”
They were left alone, and Athelny lifted the pewter tankard to his lips. He drank long and deep.
“My word, is there anything better than English beer?” he said. “Let us thank God for simple pleasures, roast beef and rice pudding, a good appetite and beer. I was married to a lady once. My God! Don’t marry a lady, my boy.”
Philip laughed. He was exhilarated by the scene, the funny little man in his odd clothes, the panelled room and the Spanish furniture, the English fare: the whole thing had an exquisite incongruity.
“You laugh, my boy, you can’t imagine marrying beneath you. You want a wife who’s an intellectual equal. Your head is crammed full of ideas of comradeship. Stuff and nonsense, my boy! A man doesn’t want to talk politics to his wife, and what do you think I care for Betty’s views upon the Differential Calculus? A man wants a wife who can cook his dinner and look after his children. I’ve tried both and I know. Let’s have the pudding in.”
He clapped his hands and presently Sally came. When she took away the plates, Philip wanted to get up and help her, but Athelny stopped him.
“Let her alone, my boy. She doesn’t want you to fuss about, do you, Sally? And she won’t think it rude of you to sit still while she waits upon you. She don’t care a damn for chivalry, do you, Sally?”
“No, father,” answered Sally demurely.
“Do you know what I’m talking about, Sally?”
“No, father. But you know mother doesn’t like you to swear.”
Athelny laughed boisterously. Sally brought them plates of rice pudding, rich, creamy, and luscious. Athelny attacked his with gusto.
“One of the rules of this house is that Sunday dinner should never alter. It is a ritual. Roast beef and rice pudding for fifty Sundays in the year. On Easter Sunday lamb and green peas, and at Michaelmas roast goose and apple sauce. Thus we preserve the traditions of our people. When Sally marries she will forget many of the wise things I have taught her, but she will never forget that if you want to be good and happy you must eat on Sundays roast beef and rice pudding.”
“You’ll call when you’re ready for cheese,” said Sally impassively.
“D’you know the legend of the halcyon?” said Athelny: Philip was growing used to his rapid leaping from one subject to another. “When the kingfisher, flying over the sea, is exhausted, his mate places herself beneath him and bears him along upon her stronger wings. That is what a man wants in a wife, the halcyon. I lived with my first wife for three years. She was a lady, she had fifteen hundred a year, and we used to give nice little dinner parties in our little red brick house in Kensington. She was a charming woman; they all said so, the barristers and their wives who dined with us, and the literary stockbrokers, and the budding politicians; oh, she was a charming woman. She made me go to church in a silk hat and a frock coat, she took me to classical concerts, and she was very fond of lectures on Sunday afternoon; and she sat down to breakfast every morning at eight-thirty, and if I was late breakfast was cold; and she read the right books, admired the right pictures, and adored the right music. My God, how that woman bored me! She is charming still, and she lives in the little red brick house in Kensington, with Morris papers and Whistler’s etchings on the walls, and gives the same nice little dinner parties, with veal creams and ices from Gunter’s, as she did twenty years ago.”
Philip did not ask by what means the ill-matched couple had separated, but Athelny told him.
“Betty’s not my wife, you know; my wife wouldn’t divorce me. The children are bastards, every jack one of them, and are they any the worse for that? Betty was one of the maids in the little red brick house in Kensington. Four or five years ago I was on my uppers, and I had seven children, and I went to my wife and asked her to help me. She said she’d make me an allowance if I’d give Betty up and go abroad. Can you see me giving Betty up? We starved for a while instead. My wife said I loved the gutter. I’ve degenerated; I’ve come down in the world; I earn three pounds a week as press agent to a linendraper, and every day I thank God that I’m not in the little red brick house in Kensington.”
Sally brought in Cheddar cheese, and Athelny went on with his fluent conversation.
“It’s the greatest mistake in the world to think that one needs money to bring up a family. You need money to make them gentlemen and ladies, but I don’t want my children to be ladies and gentlemen. Sally’s going to earn her living in another year. She’s to be apprenticed to a dressmaker, aren’t you, Sally? And the boys are going to serve their country. I want them all to go into the Navy; it’s a jolly life and a healthy life, good food, good pay, and a pension to end their days on.”
Philip lit his pipe. Athelny smoked cigarettes of Havana tobacco, which he rolled himself. Sally cleared away. Philip was reserved, and it embarrassed him to be the recipient of so many confidences. Athelny, with his powerful voice in the diminutive body, with his bombast, with his foreign look, with his emphasis, was an astonishing creature. He reminded Philip a good deal of Cronshaw. He appeared to have the same independence of thought, the same bohemianism, but he had an infinitely more vivacious temperament; his mind was coarser, and he had not that interest in the abstract which made Cronshaw’s conversation so captivating. Athelny was very proud of the county family to which he belonged; he showed Philip photographs of an Elizabethan mansion, and told him:
“The Athelnys have lived there for seven centuries, my boy. Ah, if you saw the chimney-pieces and the ceilings!”
There was a cupboard in the wainscoting and from this he took a family tree. He showed it to Philip with child-like satisfaction. It was indeed imposing.
“You see how the family names recur, Thorpe, Athelstan, Harold, Edward; I’ve used the family names for my sons. And the girls, you see, I’ve given Spanish names to.”
An uneasy feeling came to Philip that possibly the whole story was an elaborate imposture, not told with any base motive, but merely from a wish to impress, startle, and amaze. Athelny had told him that he was at Winchester; but Philip, sensitive to differences of manner, did not feel that his host had the characteristics of a man educated at a great public school. While he pointed out the great alliances which his ancestors had formed, Philip amused himself by wondering whether Athelny was not the son of some tradesman in Winchester, auctioneer or coal-merchant, and whether a similarity of surname was not his only connection with the ancient family whose tree he was displaying.