Part 6 (2/2)
The gallant gentleman! How long and how bravely he fought! But in the end it was the Dragon triumphed, the Knight that lay upon the ground, his great heart still. I have read how, with the sword of Honest Industry, one may always conquer this grim Dragon. But such was in foolish books. In truth, only with the sword of Chicanery and the stout buckler of Unscrupulousness shall you be certain of victory over him. If you care not to use these, pray to your G.o.ds, and take what comes with a stout heart.
CHAPTER III.
HOW GOOD LUCK KNOCKED AT THE DOOR OF THE MAN IN GREY.
”Louisa!” roared my father down the kitchen stairs, ”are you all asleep?
Here have I had to answer the front door myself.” Then my father strode into his office, and the door slammed. My father could be very angry when n.o.body was by.
Quarter of an hour later his bell rang with a quick, authoritative jangle. My mother, who was peeling potatoes with difficulty in wash-leather gloves, looked at my aunt who was sh.e.l.ling peas. The bell rang again louder still this time.
”Once for Louisa, twice for James, isn't it?” enquired my aunt.
”You go, Paul,” said my mother; ”say that Louisa--” but with the words a sudden flush overspread my mother's face, and before I could lay down my slate she had drawn off her gloves and had pa.s.sed me. ”No, don't stop your lessons, I'll go myself,” she said, and ran out.
A few minutes later the kitchen door opened softly, and my mother's hand, appearing through the jar, beckoned to me mysteriously.
”Walk on your toes,” whispered my mother, setting the example as she led the way up the stairs; which after the manner of stairs showed their disapproval of deception by creaking louder and more often than under any other circ.u.mstances; and in this manner we reached my parents'
bedroom, where, in the old-fas.h.i.+oned wardrobe, relic of better days, reposed my best suit of clothes, or, to be strictly grammatical, my better.
Never before had I worn these on a week-day morning, but all conversation not germane to the question of getting into them quickly my mother swept aside; and when I was complete, down even to the new shoes--Bluchers, we called them in those days--took me by the hand, and together we crept down as we had crept up, silent, stealthy and alert.
My mother led me to the street door and opened it.
”Shan't I want my cap?” I whispered. But my mother only shook her head and closed the door with a bang; and then the explanation of the pantomime came to me, for with such ”business”--comic, shall I call it, or tragic?--I was becoming familiar; and, my mother's hand upon my shoulder, we entered my father's office.
Whether from the fact that so often of an evening--our drawing-room being reserved always as a show-room in case of chance visitors; Cowper's poems, open face-downwards on the wobbly loo table; the half-finished crochet work, suggestive of elegant leisure, thrown carelessly over the arm of the smaller easy-chair--this office would become our sitting-room, its books and papers, as things of no account, being huddled out of sight; or whether from the readiness with which my father would come out of it at all times to play at something else--at cricket in the back garden on dry days or ninepins in the pa.s.sage on wet, charging back into it again whenever a knock sounded at the front door, I cannot say. But I know that as a child it never occurred to me to regard my father's profession as a serious affair. To me he was merely playing there, surrounded by big books and bundles of doc.u.ments, labelled profusely but consisting only of blank papers; by j.a.panned tin boxes, lettered imposingly, but for the most part empty. ”Sutton Hampden, Esq.,” I remember was practically my mother's work-box. The ”Drayton Estates” yielded apparently nothing but apples, a fruit of which my father was fond; while ”Mortgages” it was not until later in life I discovered had no connection with poems in ma.n.u.script, some in course of correction, others completed.
Now, as the door opened, he rose and came towards us. His hair stood up from his head, for it was a habit of his to rumple it as he talked; and this added to his evident efforts to compose his face into an expression of businesslike gravity, added emphasis, if such were needed, to the suggestion of the over long schoolboy making believe.
”This is the youngster,” said my father, taking me from my mother, and pa.s.sing me on. ”Tall for his age, isn't he?”
With a twist of his thick lips, he rolled the evil-smelling cigar he was smoking from the left corner of his mouth to the right; and held out a fat and not too clean hand, which, as it closed round mine, brought to my mind the picture of the walrus in my natural history book; with the other he flapped me kindly on the head.
”Like 'is mother, wonderfully like 'is mother, ain't 'e?” he observed, still holding my hand. ”And that,” he added with a wink of one of his small eyes towards my father, ”is about the 'ighest compliment I can pay 'im, eh?”
His eyes were remarkably small, but marvellously bright and piercing; so much so that when he turned them again upon me I tried to think quickly of something nice about him, feeling sure that he could see right into me.
”And where are you thinkin' of sendin' 'im?” he continued; ”Eton or 'Arrow?”
”We haven't quite made up our minds as yet,” replied my father; ”at present we are educating him at home.”
”You take my tip,” said the fat man, ”and learn all you can. Look at me! If I'd 'ad the opportunity of being a schollard I wouldn't be here offering your father an extravagant price for doin' my work; I'd be able to do it myself.”
”You seem to have got on very well without it,” laughed my father; and in truth his air of prosperity might have justified greater self-complacency. Rings sparkled on his blunt fingers, and upon the swelling billows of his waistcoat rose and sank a ma.s.sive gold cable.
”I'd 'ave done better with it,” he grunted.
<script>