The Debit Account Part 19

But Aunt Angela, in her flurry, had only succeeded in making the candlesticks a hopeless cat's-cradle of wool before Evie's voice of vivacious welcome was heard, and Pepper himself entered.

He had Whitlock and a stranger with him, the latter a bearded and taciturn provincial who was introduced as Mr Toothill. Mr Toothill, indeed, I gathered to be the reason of the visit. Pepper has to be charming to a great variety of men, and is not often beaten, but occasionally there does fall to him ("for his virtues," he says) a man he can neither dine, wine nor take to a show, and I know the signs in him when he is at his most affable and most intensely bored. I may say at once that Mr Toothill has no connection with my tale other than as having been the cause of this visit.

Now Pepper has the gift of being able to make all manner of things (especially men) invisible when he chooses; and although Aunt Angela, in making out of sight with the wool and the candlesticks of Pepper's own giving, had only succeeded in putting them on the table and making them the most conspicuous objects in the room, for Pepper they did not exist. That bright photographic eye of his took in every other object in the room, but no candlesticks.

But not so Mr Toothill. He came, Whitlock told me afterwards, from the West Riding of Yorks.h.i.+re, where he was a power; but so little of a power was he in London that, had Pepper not rashly burdened himself with him, he would probably have waited in King's Cross Station for the next train back to his own parts. Anyway, here he was in my house, and as his eyes fell on the wool-winding, they lighted up (so Whitlock said) with the first spark of interest they had shown that evening.

"This is like ho-o-ome, at all events," he said, giving the word I don't know how many "o's." "But you've got it felted, haven't you? If the ladies will excuse me----"

And without more ceremony, and in spite of Aunt Angela's protestations, he drew the candlesticks towards himself, began to unravel the ridiculous tangle, and became for purposes of conversation a piece of furniture with a beard.

Of course Mr Toothill had been foisted on us merely because Pepper had not known what else in the world to do with him; but Pepper's beautiful candour rarely confessed much of what was really pa.s.sing in his mind, and I awaited with relish the reason he would give for his call. By this time I was quite wide awake again; and Mr Toothill had refused the whisky I had got out.

Well, Judy had several reasons, all sufficient, all perfect; but alas!

he and Evie ever hit it off with deplorable lucklessness. He and Whitlock were Jackie's G.o.dfathers; but, as against the rather loud way in which he had rung the bell, his urbanities about the spiritual relations.h.i.+p availed him little with Evie. Her looks said plainly, to me at all events, that if Pepper intended her to believe that he had called on an eating-up night merely to ask how Jackie was getting on, he mistook her. Driven from this outpost, Pepper proudly refused to urge the commonplace excuse of private business with myself. Instead, he delicately adjusted his trousers, produced his cigar-case, besought Evie's permission with a glance, and then, lighting up with deliberation, astonished myself hardly less than Evie by saying: "Well--unless Whitlock's already told you--I've come for your congratulations, Mrs Jeffries."

"Oh? What on, Mr Pepper?" said Evie. She had summoned up a ready, glad look.

"Ah, I see he hasn't told you. Stupid of me--of course he couldn't have, as I only heard myself about four hours ago. Dear Mrs Jeffries, you may congratulate me on my impending knighthood."

Evie jumped up. "_Really?_" I myself was not so much surprised at the fact as at the moment of its coming, though my surprise at that also pa.s.sed instantly. Of course it would be so much prestige for the Consolidation.

Yes, Judy was down among the approaching New Year's Honours. And so he ought to have been. If there is official recognition for a man who can merely advise in a party's interest which provincial mayors can be given the accolade without being made the laughing-stock of their neighbours, Judy's services to the Administration had been far greater. To the man on 'change this would doubtless seem a feather in the cap of the F.B.C.; only a few knew that before long it would prove a thorn in their sides.

Yes, it was distinctly good preparation for the coming Consolidation, and, in the meantime, there was the knight-elect's health to drink, and I had only got the whisky out. I myself fetched up the claret for Aunt Angela and Evie. Both the announcement and the manner of it had been a huge success, and Billy Izzard, remarking "I won't say 'may I,'--"

reached for Pepper's cigar-case.

"Well, I _am_ glad!" said Evie, maybe, wife-like, casting ahead in a wonder as to what my own chances might be. "And are we really the first to know?"

"Except Whitlock and Mr Toothill, yes. But of course I needn't say----"

"Oh, of course we wouldn't breathe a word! Isn't it splendid, auntie?"

Indeed, Evie seemed quite won over. I think she came nearer that evening to liking Pepper than she has done either before or since.

As I said, I have an object in relating all this--several objects. The next thing happened perhaps half-an-hour later, when Mr Toothill had almost freed one candlestick of wool, but otherwise had not greatly added to our sociability. For that half hour Pepper had reigned among us, but then, bit by bit, he had begun slowly to slip back again. We had guardedly discussed the prospects of the Consolidation; and then, as a preliminary to his coming down presently with a run, Pepper made a perfectly innocent but altogether luckless remark. It was about Miss Levey.

"It was understood she wasn't to come over," he grumbled; "I agreed to that; but I don't see why she should be taken away from me just now." (I had got rid of Miss Levey that very week.) "Hang her private convictions! What do I care about her private convictions as long as she does her work?"

I laughed, though a little lamely. "My dear Judy, we don't want a woman whose job interferes with her propaganda, and she's been incubating 'rights' of one sort and another for a long time. Send her to Schmerveloff: he receives that sort with open arms. Let him make a case of persecution out of it. We want efficiency."

"But, dash it all, she _was_ efficient."

"She wasn't. You had to pull her up last week, and I had twice the week before. She'd been warned."

Judy, who really didn't care a b.u.t.ton about the loss of Miss Levey, laughed. "The red rag again, Jeffries! You have here, Mr Toothill, quite the most insular man in this realm, _and_ the most obstinate. I can make him do anything he's a mind to--and not much else. Well, well, if you won't have a suffragette, perhaps you'll find me a member of the Women's Primrose League?"

But here Whitlock struck in. "By the way, I'd an applicant this morning."

"From the Women's Primrose League?" Pepper tossed over his shoulder.

"I don't mean for the private work, but as general amanuensis," Whitlock went on. "I asked her how she heard we wanted anybody, and she said she hadn't--had just looked in on the chance."

"Go to Jeffries, since he's made it his affair," Pepper grumbled.

"Well, Miss Day _is_ getting married," Whitlock went on, "so that we shall want somebody in the outer office. Then promote Miss Lingard----"

"What was she like?"

Billy Izzard's eyes were dreamily on the smoke of Pepper's expensive cigar, but I saw a change come into them. Whitlock has a pa.s.sable gift of description. He began to describe the woman who had looked in on the chance of a job: before he had finished I had no doubt, and Billy (I gathered) not much, of who the female out-o'-work had been. "Hallo, my model!" I guessed to be in his mind; but it was no business of his, and he appeared to be relis.h.i.+ng his cigar as before.

"I've forgotten her name, but I have it in the book," Whitlock concluded. "Clouston or Christian or something like that."

"Well, see she isn't anti-suffrage either," quoth Pepper; "as far as I can see, that would be just as bad."

And he selected a fresh cigar.

My first thought had shaped itself in the very words for which Louie herself had pulled me up so sharply: "Poor woman!" For it was pathetically clear what had happened--what must have happened. Once more she had taken a resolution too heroic to be held to, and whether she had caved in because of myself or because of the necessity for feeding and clothing her boy made no practical difference. I could only hope it was the last. Poverty leaves little room for heroics. Later, as I think I told you, Louie got Miss Day's post, and after that Miss Lingard's, which she has still.

And my second thought was that, as she had applied of herself for Miss Levey's place, there would now be no more love lost between her and Miss Levey than there was between Miss Levey and myself. I began to muse on this....

But let me go on with that curiously broken evening.

Ever since Pepper had told us about his knighthood Aunt Angela had sat, her slender fingers folded in her lap, smiling from time to time into the fire. Now knighthood is a temporal distinction, and, as such (I am putting this bluntly), another nut for that new and dainty humility of hers to crack. For worldliness, it was my own promised wealth in another form; and against such things she seemed to have taken up some sort of a position. I think the less practicable human charities had given her a tenderness even for Miss Levey, for I had not escaped a soft look of reproach when I had made my observations on that lady; and altogether she appeared to be wrapped in a little private veil of dissociation from the rest of us and our doings.

So--again to antic.i.p.ate what became plain a little later--she also was nursing her little surprise for us. Several times during the last month or two she had spoken vaguely of leaving her rooms in Woburn Place, the rooms she had shared with Evie before our marriage; but I had not taken her very seriously; she was welcome to come to us (as she afterwards did) whenever she chose, and she knew it. But she had got it into her head that she would like to take a single room--oh, quite a large, airy, cheerful one--and, as it turned out presently, she had actually done so that very day.

Some chance remark of Pepper's--I think it was something about how pleasant it was to see us thus in our little family circle--gave her the opportunity for her announcement. There had been a little byplay between Pepper and Evie, who had wanted to know why in that case he didn't get married himself; and to that Pepper, abolis.h.i.+ng (as it were) the candlesticks under his nose by an act equal in potency to that of creation itself, had answered gallantly (and, in the presence of those candlesticks, rather naughtily) that our own menage set him a standard which he would rather cherish in thought than fall from in miserable actuality. It was then that his look embraced Aunt Angela, and my maiden aunt by marriage smiled.

"I suppose Mr Pepper thinks I live here because he always finds me here," she said. "But that's only because I've no conscience about inflicting myself on other people. _My_ dwelling's a much more modest one than this, Mr Pepper."

I think Pepper was insincere enough to reply that that it might quite well be and yet almost everything that could be desired.

"I forgot to tell you that, Jeff," Aunt Angela continued, turning to me.

"As a matter of fact I only settled the matter to-day--so you're not the only one for whom to-day's been _quite_ important, Mr Pepper." She preened herself.

"Oh!" I said shortly. I thought the whole idea rather stupid. But she continued:

"I go in in exactly ten days, as soon as the paint's dry. And as I don't begin to pay till Christmas, I actually get a week for nothing. That might not be much to some people," she purred, dropping her eyes, "but it's quite a lot to me. So, Jeff, I shall want you to bring a hammer and a foot-rule--or whatever it is. He's _so_ clever at putting up things, Mr Pepper."

She ran amiably on, describing her proposed arrangements.

I could hardly blame Pepper that, to save himself from talking, he drew her out. He was bored to death with the drowsy ba.n.a.lity of the evening.

So Aunt Angela told us how cosy she was going to be in her new quarters.

With her bed screened off in one corner, and the day's fire still burning, she would be able (she said) to lie happily awake and watch the firelight on the ceiling and indulge "an old woman's fancies"; there would be no stairs except when she came out of doors; and she wouldn't have to cook in the same room, for there was a little landing with a stove left by the last tenant--and so on. Pepper was the picture of polite interest.

"And I shall give a little housewarming, I think," she said, as one who knew that hospitality consisted in the hosts.h.i.+p and not in the entertainment provided. "Really I should like to ask you all, Mr Toothill too."

Toothill, who had now finished the "unfelting," had struck a match and was experimenting to find out how much of the worsted was cotton and how much wool. He looked up for a moment, but resumed his occupation. Pepper hoped that _he_ would not be left out of Aunt Angela's housewarming.