The Judgment House Part 11

As the lad ate his wonderful breakfast, in which nearly half a pot of marmalade and enough b.u.t.ter for three ordinary people figured, Stafford read the papers attentively, to give his guest a fair chance at the food and to overcome his self-consciousness. He got an occasional glance at the trencherman, however, as he changed the sheets, stepped across the room to get a cigarette, or poked the small fire--for, late September as it was, a sudden cold week of rain had come and gone, leaving the air raw; and a fire was welcome.

At last, when he realized that the activities of the table were decreasing, he put down his paper. "Is it all right?" he asked. "Is the coffee hot?"

"I ain't never 'ad a meal like that, y'r gryce, not never any time,"

the boy answered, with a new sort of fire in his eyes.

"Was there enough?"

"I've left some," answered his guest, looking at the jar of marmalade and half a slice of toast. "I likes the coffee hot--tykes y'r longer to drink it," he added.

Ian Stafford chuckled. He was getting more than the worth of his money.

He had nibbled at his own breakfast, with the perturbations of a crossing from Flus.h.i.+ng still in his system, and its equilibrium not fully restored; and yet, with the waste of his own meal and the neglect of his own appet.i.te, he had given a great and happy half-hour to a waif of humanity.

As he looked at the boy he wondered how many thousands there were like him within rifle-shot from where he sat, and he thought each of them would thank whatever G.o.ds they knew for such a neglected meal. The words from the scare-column of the paper he held smote his sight:

"War Inevitable--Transvaal Bristling with Guns and Loaded to the Nozzle with War Stores--Milner and Kruger No Nearer a Settlement--Sullen and Contemptuous Treatment of British Outlander." ... And so on.

And if war came, if England must do this ugly thing, fulfil her bitter and terrible task, then what about such as this young outlander here, this outcast from home and goodly toil and civilized conditions, this sickly froth of the muddy and dolorous stream of lower England? So much withdrawn from the sources of the possible relief, so much less with which to deal with their miseries--perhaps hundreds of millions, mopped up by the parched and unproductive soil of battle and disease and loss.

He glanced at the paper again. "Britons Hold Your Own," was the heading of the chief article. "Yes, we must hold our own," he said, aloud, with a sigh. "If it comes, we must see it through; but the breakfasts will be fewer. It works down one way or another--it all works down to this poor little devil and his kind."

"Now, what's your name?" he asked.

"Jigger," was the reply.

"What else?"

"Nothin', y'r gryce."

"Jigger--what?"

"It's the only nyme I got," was the reply.

"What's your father's or your mother's name?"

"I ain't got none. I only got a sister."

"What's her name?"

"Lou," he answered. "That's her real name. But she got a fancy name yistiddy. She was took on at the opera yistiddy, to sing with a hunderd uvver girls on the styge. She's Lulu Luckingham now."

"Oh--Luckingham!" said Stafford, with a smile, for this was a name of his own family, and of much account in circles he frequented. "And who gave her that name? Who were her G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers?"

"I dunno, y'r gryce. There wasn't no religion in it. They said she'd have to be called somefink, and so they called her that. Lou was always plenty for 'er till she went there yistiddy."

"What did she do before yesterday?"

"Sold flowers w'en she could get 'em to sell. 'Twas when she couldn't sell her flowers that she piped up sort of dead wild--for she 'adn't 'ad nothin' to eat, an' she was fair crusty. It was then a gentleman, 'e 'eard 'er singin' hot, an' he says, 'That's good enough for a start,' 'e says, 'an' you come wiv me,' he says. 'Not much,' Lou says, 'not if I knows it. I seed your kind frequent.' But 'e stuck to it, an'

says, 'It's stryght, an' a lydy will come for you to-morrer, if you'll be 'ere on this spot, or tell me w'ere you can be found.' An' Lou says, says she, 'You buy my flowers, so's I kin git me bread-baskit full, an'

then I'll think it over.' An' he bought 'er flowers, an' give 'er five bob. An' Lou paid rent for both of us wiv that, an' 'ad brekfist; an'

sure enough the lydy come next dy an' took her off. She's in the opery now, an' she'll 'ave 'er brekfist reg'lar. I seed the lydy meself. Her picture 's on the 'oardings--"

Suddenly he stopped. "W'y, that's 'er--that's 'er!" he said, pointing to the mantel-piece.

Stafford followed the finger and the glance. It was Al'mah's portrait in the costume she had worn over three years ago, the night when Rudyard Byng had rescued her from the flames. He had bought it then. It had been unpacked again by Gleg, and put in the place it had occupied for a day or two before he had gone out of England to do his country's work--and to face the bitterest disillusion of his life; to meet the heaviest blow his pride and his heart had ever known.

"So that's the lady, is it?" he said, musingly, to the boy, who nodded a.s.sent.

"Go and have a good look at it," urged Stafford.

The boy did so. "It's 'er--done up for the opery," he declared.

"Well, Lulu Luckingham is all right, then. That lady will be good to her."

"Right. As soon as I seed her, I whispers to Lou 'You keep close to that there wall,' I sez. 'There's a chimbey in it, an' you'll never be cold,' I says to Lou."

Stafford laughed softly at the ill.u.s.tration. Many a time the lad snuggled up to a wall which had a warm chimney, and he had got his figure of speech from real life.

"Well, what's to become of you?" Stafford asked.

"Me--I'll be level wiv me rent to-day," he answered, turning over the two s.h.i.+llings and some coppers in his pocket; "an' Lou and me's got a fair start."

Stafford got up, came over, and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I'm going to give you a sovereign," he said--"twenty s.h.i.+llings, for your fair start; and I want you to come to me here next Sunday-week to breakfast, and tell me what you've done with it."

"Me--y'r gryce!" A look of fright almost came into the lad's face.

"Twenty bob--me!"

The sovereign was already in his hand, and now his face suffused. He seemed anxious to get away, and looked round for his cap. He couldn't do here what he wanted to do. He felt that he must burst.

"Now, off you go. And you be here at nine o'clock on Sunday-week with the papers, and tell me what you've done."

"Gawd--my Gawd!" said the lad, huskily. The next minute he was out in the hall, and the door was shut behind him. A moment later, hearing a whoop, Stafford went to the window and, looking down, he saw his late visitor turning a cart-wheel under the nose of a policeman, and then, with another whoop, shooting down into the Mall, making Lambeth way.

With a smile he turned from the window. "Well, we shall see," he said.

"Perhaps it will be my one lucky speculation. Who knows--who knows!"

His eye caught the portrait of Al'mah on the mantelpiece. He went over and stood looking at it musingly.

"You were a good girl," he said, aloud. "At any rate, you wouldn't pretend. You'd gamble with your immortal soul, but you wouldn't sell it--not for three millions, not for a hundred times three millions. Or is it that you are all alike, you women? Isn't there one of you that can be absolutely true? Isn't there one that won't smirch her soul and kill the faith of those that love her for some moment's excitement, for gold to gratify a vanity, or to have a wider sweep to her skirts? Vain, vain, vain--and dishonourable, essentially dishonourable. There might be tragedies, but there wouldn't be many intrigues if women weren't so dishonourable--the secret orchard rather than the open highway and robbery under arms.... Whew, what a world!"

He walked up and down the room for a moment, his eyes looking straight before him; then he stopped short. "I suppose it's natural that, coming back to England, I should begin to unpack a lot of old memories, empty out the box-room, and come across some useless and discarded things.

I'll settle down presently; but it's a thoroughly useless business turning over old stock. The wise man pitches it all into the junk-shop, and cuts his losses."

He picked up the Morning Post and glanced down the middle page--the social column first--with the half-amused reflection that he hadn't done it for years, and that here were the same old names reappearing, with the same brief chronicles. Here, too, were new names, some of them, if not most of them, of a foreign turn to their syllables--New York, Melbourne, Buenos Ayres, Johannesburg. His lip curled a little with almost playful scorn. At St. Petersburg, Vienna, and elsewhere he had been vaguely conscious of these social changes; but they did not come within the ambit of his daily life, and so it had not mattered.

And there was no reason why it should matter now. His England was a land the original elements of which would not change, had not changed; for the old small inner circle had not been invaded, was still impervious to the wash of wealth and sn.o.bbery and push. That refuge had its sequestered glades, if perchance it was unilluminating and rather heavily decorous; so that he could let the climbers, the toadies, the gold-spillers, and the bribers have the middle of the road.

It did not matter so much that London was changing fast. The old clock on the tower of St. James's would still give the time to his step as he went to and from the Foreign Office, and there were quiet places like Kensington Gardens where the bounding person would never think to stray. Indeed, they never strayed; they only rushed and pushed where their spreading tails could be seen by the mult.i.tude. They never got farther west than Rotten Row, which was in possession of three cla.s.ses of people--those who sat in Parliament, those who had seats on the Stock Exchange, and those who could not sit their horses. Three years had not done it all, but it had done a good deal; and he was more keenly alive to the changes and developments which had begun long before he left and had increased vastly since. Wealth was more and more the master of England--new-made wealth; and some of it was too ostentatious and too pretentious to condone, much less indulge.