Here and Hereafter Part 22

Peters was lonely no longer while Elsa's holiday lasted. As a rule she made suggestions, and he acted upon them. She wanted to know why he never went on the river; so one afternoon he took her. A man from the boat-house rowed them.

"Why don't you row yourself?" asked Elsa.

"Because," Peters answered, as he ran the boat's nose hard into a thorn bush, "I have to steer. Mind your head--I took that a little too close."

The man from the boat-house backed them out. Similar incidents had occurred frequently since Peters took the lines. At the boatman's suggestion he now relinquished them.

In the course of her holiday Mrs Markham, so Elsa said, died; she was buried under the plane tree. Peters dug the grave with his pocket-knife and a portion of a broken tea-cup. When the funeral service was over Peters produced a toy cricket set, and proposed a game. Elsa went in, and Peters bowled. After an hour and a half she retired hot; she was not out. Peters had bowled her twice, but on each occasion the ball was disqualified by the umpire. Elsa was the umpire. On the first occasion he had forgotten to say play, and on the second he had bowled faster than the rules of cricket permitted. Peters did not get an innings--that was characteristic of him.

On Sundays Peters took Elsa to church. She refused to go more than once a Sunday, because her father went only once; if she went twice, she explained, it would be like saying that her father was a bad man; and he was a very good man. Peters asked her what prayers she said night and morning.

"I used to have special ones," she said, "but I've forgotten them.

Besides, I'm too old for them; they were baby things. Now I say any colic out of the prayer-book. They're all good."

"I don't think that's quite right," said Peters.

"Pa," she observed, with subtle relevancy, "used to say that all s'listers were liars."

"Well, I'm _not_ a solicitor," Peters objected triumphantly.

He remembered two prayers for morning and evening that he had learned when he was a boy. He copied them out in an exquisite hand, with Old English t.i.tles, on a sheet of tinted cardboard. Then he ruled a frame round them--three thin red lines within a broad black line. He was proud of his work. He presented it to Elsa. The wayward Elsa chose to be pleased with it, and owned that Peters wrote better than she did. She took the card away to her room at once--"to try them," she explained.

Peters found himself very dull indeed when Elsa had gone. He thought it over, and concluded that he was a man who needed companions.h.i.+p. One night he wrote a long letter--not a love-letter--to Flynders's cousin's second daughter, and posted it; he got no reply, and a few months afterwards he read in Mrs Marks's newspaper the announcement that Flynders's cousin's second daughter had married the curate.

"She was always one for social success," Peters reflected.

He wrote to Elsa, and she also did not answer--she had explained to him that he must not expect it, because she disliked writing letters. He sent her every year a birthday card (with a present), a Christmas card (also with a present), and a valentine. She sent him, so far as he knew, nothing at all; but one year he received a very ugly valentine, an insulting valentine. He thought that it must have come either from Elsa or from that young clerk who had lent him the really spicy novel.

One day that young clerk seemed almost friendly to Peters. "You're a lonely old chap," he said to him in the luncheon hour. "Why don't you buy a dog? It would be a companion to you." Peters thought it rather a good idea. As it happened, the young clerk had one that he wanted to sell; he described it as a faithful, pure-bred, sweet-tempered fox-terrier. It's name was Tommy. Peters bought it, and its kennel was located under the plane tree.

Tommy liked almost everyone except Peters. He would follow anyone except Peters. If he was in the mood to snap at anybody, he preferred to snap at Peters. Mrs Marks (under a special pecuniary arrangement) agreed to wash the dog. But she soon pleaded for the use of a muzzle on those occasions.

"For the way that dog turns against anything in the shape of soap and water is pretty nigh human. Instink, they calls it."

Peters thought that muzzles were inhuman, and said that he would wash the dog himself. The first time he tried Tommy bit him in three places, and escaped before the operation was over. He bolted into the street, ran away, and never came back.

So Peters was quite alone. Mrs Marks was too busy to talk to him. Elsa did not come back. But the old plane tree did not seem to mind him.

As the years went on Peters found that he got old very quickly. One of the effects of age, in his case, was a violent pain in the chest, which came on after any great exertion or if he walked fast uphill. He went for a holiday--a week at Hunstanton--but it did not seem to do him much good. But when he came back he heard glorious news. Elsa was coming again for a few days.

"Now, I'm glad," said Peters. "I always liked the child. Such bright ways she had! We shall soon be playing cricket together again."

"Why, you forget, Mr Peters," said Mrs Marks. "Elsa's near seventeen now. Besides, you're too much of an invalid to think of running about.

You've aged." Mrs Marks herself did not age; she was one of those hard, wiry women that are capable of looking forty for twenty years.

Elsa looked very pretty. She still wore her hair down, but her dresses were much longer. She had a very superior manner, and did not seem particularly glad to see Peters. She took one of the liquorice jujubes that he offered her. But she explained that she did not care about that sort now; she only liked the best chocolates. "You can't get them here.

If you want to give me anything, Mr Peters, there's a blouse (two-and-eleven) in Higginson's window that would do me nicely."

He looked a little bewildered, but he bought her the blouse, and it did her very nicely indeed--so nicely that she thought it was a pity that she was not to be photographed in it. "We might be photographed together," she said alluringly; "I shouldn't want more than two copies--cabinets."

This was better. Peters was pleased that she wanted him to be photographed with her. The photographer placed her on a rustic stile, with Peters standing by her side. He smiled widely and with feeling, as he looked at her. She shook her head impatiently. "Oh, this won't do!"

she said, "your grinning puts me out. Besides, you shake the stile. I wish you'd stand away and let me be done alone. Then you can have yourself took afterwards."

So Peters stood away meekly. But on the whole he did not think it worth while to have himself taken afterwards.

The two copies arrived, and satisfied Elsa. "Though I've known myself look better," she said. One copy was for herself, and the other she destined for a particular friend. Peters had bought a plush frame, supposing that she had intended to give him one copy; well, that did not matter; he could order a third from the photographer. In the meantime he was required to pack up the photograph for the particular friend.

"It would travel safer," he said, "if you packed it between a couple of pieces of card."

Elsa looked thoughtful. "I've got an old bit in my writing-case," she said. "Go and fetch it, Mr Peters."

He hunted through the writing-case, but could not find it.

"Well, I know it's there, anyhow," she retorted. "I kept it, knowing it would come in some day. It's got those prayers on it that you wrote out for me when I was here before."

"Oh, yes, I saw that. I didn't think--"

"Well, never mind, I'll go and get it myself; torn in half, it will just do. It will puzzle my friend, though--he's not one of the praying sort."

Peters was guilty of looking somewhat despondent as he moved away; this made Elsa rather angry. "You needn't look so glum," she said; "you didn't expect me to keep it all my life, and have it buried with me--silly old card--did you?"

"One thing I will say," Mrs Marks observed, after Elsa had gone, "is that she does brighten up a house. And I hope her looks mayn't be a snare to her. She has one young admirer already, and she a mere child!

She's promised to come again next year. I hope you'll get on better with her then. You seemed more stand-offish this time--you've no complaint against her?"

"Oh, no! certainly not."

"You're not looking well, Mr Peters. You'll excuse my mentioning it, but you want a doctor."

Peters shook his head slowly, but owned to a touch of something--probably liver. It was Sunday evening, and he had been intending to go to church as usual. But he changed his mind. He did not feel up to it. He sat under the plane tree and thought about Elsa as she used to be before she grew up.

He knew that old tree well now, knew every twist of the branches, every kink of the bark. In an unreasoning way he loved the tree. It had never repulsed him; it had always been there for him.

Mrs Marks was right. Peters did want a doctor. He took to fainting when he was at work at the office. He apologised for it to the senior partner, who had found him unconscious, and promised that it should not occur again. But it did. One morning he was summoned to the senior partner's private room. Grantham and Flynders were both there. They told him that he had been for many years a faithful servant to them, and that now--when he was past work--they wanted to mark their sense of his services. He was not to come to the office any more, but they named a sum which would be paid him by way of pension for the rest of his life.

And they advised him to see a doctor.

Peters could not understand it, and it had to be explained to him again.

Then he tried to thank them. He felt proud and tremulous. He had been praised--it was years since anybody had praised him. He walked home and told Mrs Marks about it. He was not to work any more. Grantham & Flynders had praised him very highly. And he had a pension. And Mrs Marks congratulated him, and said that he deserved his luck. And finally Peters broke down and wept.

Peters spent most of his days, doing absolutely nothing, stretched on the gra.s.s under the plane tree. He had grown rather queer in one or two points. Mrs Marks could not make him believe that the strip of land was to be built over, and that the tree would have to come down. He did not argue about it. He merely said, "They shall not cut that tree down. I shall see about it."