Once Aboard the Lugger Part 34

"Oh, darling, _darling_ Miss Humf'ay, we _will_ be good if you'll stay!" They felt this was the desperate threat that so often followed their misdemeanours put into action.

She held them, hugging them. "It isn't that. You have been good."

"Then you said you would stay for ever and ever if we were good."

"Not ever and ever; I said--I said perhaps a fairy prince would come to take me. Didn't I?"

This was the romance that forbade tears. But David had doubts. He regarded the hansom at the door: "That's a cab, not a carriage. Fairy princes don't come in cabs."

"The prince is waiting. Kiss me, darling Davie. Angie, dear, dear Angle, kiss me."

She rose. Mrs. Chater had come from the stairs, now laid hands upon the small people and dragged them back from the pretty figure about which they clung.

They screamed, "Let me go!"

David roared; dropped p.r.o.ne upon the mat to kick and howl: "Take away your _hand_, mother!"

Angela gasped: "Oh, comeback, comeback, darling Miss Humf'ay!"

With a glare of defiance into Mrs. Chater's stormy eyes, my Mary stooped over David.

"David!" The calm ring of the tones he had learned to obey checked his clamour, his plunging kicks. She stooped; kissed him. "Be good as gold," she commanded. "Promise."

"Good as gold--yes--p'omise," David choked.

Angela was given, and gave, the magic formula. Mary stepped back.

Susan slammed the door.

With quivering lips my Mary walked to the cab.

"Drive down the street," she choked; lay back against the cus.h.i.+ons; gave herself to shaking sobs.

V.

Her George met her a very few yards down the street. He gave an order to the cabman and sat beside her.

It was not long before her grief was hushed. She dried her eyes; nestled against this wonderful fellow who, as love had now const.i.tuted her world, was the solace against every trouble that could come to her, the s.h.i.+eld against any power that might arise to do her hurt.

They debated the position and found it desperate; discussed the immediate future to discover it threatening. Yet the gloom was irradiated by the glowing light of the prospective future; the rumbling of present fears was lost in the tinkling music of their voices, striking notes from love.

The cab twisted this way and that; clattered over Battersea Bridge, down the Park, to the right past the Free Library, and so into Meath Street and to the clean little house of the landlady whom George knew.

To her, in the tiny sitting-room, the story was told.

It appeared that she had never yet taken a lady lodger. In her street ladies were regarded with suspicion; that no petticoats were ever to be fetched across the threshold was a rule to which each medical student who engaged her rooms must first subscribe.

None the less she was here acquiescent. She knew George well; had for him an affection above that which commonly she entertained for the noisy young men who were her means of livelihood. Mary should pay for the little back bedroom that Mr. Thornton had; and, free of charge, should have use of the sitting-room rented by Mr. Grainger. There would be no lodgers until the medical schools reopened in October.

So it was settled--and together in the sitting-room where Mrs. Pinking made them a little lunch again they debated the immediate future. It was three weeks before George's examination was due. Again he declared himself confident that, when actually he had pa.s.sed, his uncle would not refuse the 400 pounds which meant the world to them--which meant the tight little practice at Runnygate. But the intervening weeks were meanwhile to be faced. Mary must have home. At the Agency she must pour forth her tale and seek new situation till they could be married.

If the Agency failed them--They shuddered.

Revolving desperate schemes for the betterment of this position into which with such alarming suddenness they had been thrust, George took his leave. He would have tarried, but his Mary was insistent that his work must not be interfered with. Upon its successful exploitation everything now depended.

Brightly she kissed her George good-bye. He was not to worry about her. She was to be shut from his mind. To-morrow she would go to the Agency. He might lunch with her, and, depend upon it, she would greet him with great news.

So they parted.

BOOK IV.

In which this History begins to rattle.

CHAPTER I.

The Author Meanders Upon The Enduring Hills; And The Reader Will Lose Nothing By Not Accompanying Him.

In pursuit of our opinion that the novel should hark back to its origin and be as a story that is told by mouth to group of listeners, here we momentarily break the thread.

It is an occasion for advertis.e.m.e.nt.

As when the personal narrator, upon resumption of his history, will at a point declare, "Now we come to the exciting part," so now do I.

Heretofore we have somewhat dragged. We have been as host and visitor at tea in the drawing-room. Guests have arrived; to you I have introduced them, and after the shortest spell they have taken their leave.

My Mary and my George--favoured guests--have sat with us through our meal; but how fleeting our converse with those others--with Mr.

William Wyvern, with Margaret, with Mrs. Major and with Mr. Marrapit!

I grant you cause to grumble at their introduction, so purposeless has been their part. I grant you they have been as the guests at whose arrival, disturbing the intimate chatter, impatient glances are exchanged; at whose departure there is shuffle of relief.

Well, I promise you we shall now link our personages and set our history bounding to its conclusion. We have collected them; now to switch on the connection and set them acting one against the other until the sparks do fly; watching those sparks shall be your entertainment.

The switch which thus sets active the play of forces I shall call circ.u.mstance. If it has been long delayed, I have the precedent of all the story of human life as my excuse. For we are the children of circ.u.mstance. We move each in our little circle by a stout hedge encompa.s.sed. Circ.u.mstance suddenly will break the wall: some fellow man or woman is flung against us, and immediately the quiet ambulation of our little circle is for some conflict sharp exchanged. To-day we are at peace with the world, to-morrow warring with all mankind.

I say with all mankind, because so narrow and so selfish is our outlook upon life that one single man or woman--a dullard neighbour or a silly girl--who may interfere with us, throws into turmoil our whole existence. Walls of impenetrable blackness shut out. all life save only this intruder and ourself; that other person becomes our world-- engaging our complete faculties.

Deeper misfortune cannot be conceived. It is through allowing such occurrences to crush us that brows are wrinkled before their time; nerves broken-edged while yet they should be firmly strung; death reached ere yet the proper span of life is lived.

For these unduly wrinkled brows, too early broken nerves, too soon encountered graves, civilised man has agreed upon an excuse. He names it the strain of life in modern conditions. There is no body in this plea. It is not the conditions that matter; it is our manner of receiving those conditions. Bend to them and they will crush; face them and they become of no avail; allow them to be the Whole of life, and immediately they are given so great a weight that to withstand them is impossible; regard them in their proper proportion to the scheme of things, and they become of airy nothingness.

For if we regulate each to its right importance all that surrounds us, not forgetting that since life is transient time is the only ultimate standard of value, how unutterably insignificant must small human troubles appear in their relation to the whole scheme of things, to the enduring hills, the immense seas, vast s.p.a.ce.

Gain strength from strength. Compare vexations encompa.s.sed by the artifice of man with the tremendous life that is mothered by nature.