The Old Adam: A Story of Adventure Read online

  IV.

  Nellie led the way to the chamber known as "Maisie's room," where theyoungest of the Machins was wont to sleep in charge of the nurse, who,under the supervision of the mother of all three, had dominion overRobert, Ralph, and their little sister. The first thing that EdwardHenry noticed was the screen which shut off one of the beds. Theunfurling of the four-fold screen was always a sure sign that Nellie wastaking an infantile illness seriously. It was an indication to EdwardHenry of the importance of the dog-bite in Nellie's esteem. When allthe chicks of the brood happened to be simultaneously sound, the screenreposed, inconspicuous, at an angle against a wall behind the door; butwhen pestilence was abroad, the screen travelled from one room toanother in the wake of it, and, spreading wide, took part in the battleof life and death.

  In an angle of the screen, on the side of it away from the bed and nearthe fire (in times of stress Nellie would not rely on radiators), satold Mrs. Machin, knitting. She was a thin, bony woman of sixty-nineyears, and as hard and imperishable as teak. So far as her son knew,she had only had two illnesses in her life. The first was an attack ofinfluenza, and the second was an attack of acute rheumatism, which hadincapacitated her for several weeks. Edward Henry and Nellie had takenadvantage of her helplessness, then, to force her to give up herbarbaric cottage in Brougham Street and share permanently the splendidcomfort of their home. She existed in their home like a philosophicprisoner of war at the court of conquerors, behaving faultlessly,behaving magnanimously in the melancholy grandeur of her fall, but neverrenouncing her soul's secret independence, nor permitting herself toforget that she was on foreign ground. When Edward Henry looked atthose yellow and seasoned fingers which, by hard manual labour, had keptherself and him in the young days of his humble obscurity, and which,during sixty years had not been idle for more than six weeks in all, hegrew almost apologetic for his wealth. They reminded him of the daywhen his total resources were five pounds, won in a wager, and of theday when he drove proudly about behind a mule collecting other people'srents, and of the glittering day when he burst in on her from Llandudnowith over a thousand gold sovereigns in a hat-box,--product of his firstgreat picturesque coup,--imagining himself to be an English Jay Gould.She had not blenched even then. She had not blenched since. And shenever would blench. In spite of his gorgeous position and his uniquereputation, in spite of her well-concealed but notorious pride in him,he still went in fear of that ageless woman, whose undaunted eye alwaystold him that he was still the lad Denry, and her inferior in moralforce. The curve of her thin lips seemed ever to be warning him thatwith her pretensions were quite useless, and that she saw through him,and through him to the innermost grottoes of his poor human depravity.

  He caught her eye guiltily.

  "Behold the alderman!" she murmured with grimness.

  That was all. But the three words took thirty years off his back,snatched the half-crown cigar out of his hand, and reduced him again tothe raw, hungry boy of Brougham Street. And he knew that he had sinnedgravely in not coming up-stairs very much earlier.

  "Is that you, Father?" called the high voice of Robert from the back ofthe screen.

  He had to admit to his son that it was he.

  The infant lay on his back in Maisie's bed, while his mother sat lightlyon the edge of nurse's bed near-by.

  "Well, you're a nice chap!" said Edward Henry, avoiding Nellie's glance,but trying to face his son as one innocent man may face another, and notperfectly succeeding. He never could feel like a real father somehow.

  "My temperature's above normal," announced Robert proudly, and thenadded with regret, "but not much!"

  There was the clinical thermometer--instrument which Edward Henrydespised and detested as being an inciter of illnesses--in a glass ofwater on the table between the two beds.

  "Father!" Robert began again.

  "Well, Robert?" said Edward Henry cheerfully.

  He was glad that the child was in one of his rare loquacious moods,because the chatter not only proved that the dog had done no seriousdamage,--it also eased the silent strain between himself and Nellie.

  "Why did you play the Funeral March, Father?" asked Robert; and thequestion fell into the tranquillity of the room rather like a bomb thathad not quite decided whether or not to burst.

  For the second time that evening Edward Henry was dashed.

  "Have you been meddling with my music-rolls?"

  "No, Father. I only read the labels."

  This child simply read everything.

  "How did you know I was playing a funeral march?" Edward Henry demanded.

  "Oh, _I_ didn't tell him!" Nellie put in, excusing herself before shewas accused. She smiled benignly, as an angel woman, capable offorgiving all. But there were moments when Edward Henry hated moralsuperiority and Christian meekness in a wife. Moreover, Nellie somewhatspoiled her own effect by adding with an artificial continuation of thesmile, "You needn't look at _me_!"

  Edward Henry considered the remark otiose. Though he had indeed venturedto look at her, he had not looked at her in the manner which sheimplied.

  "It made a noise like funerals and things," Robert explained.

  "Well, it seems to me, _you_ have been playing a funeral march," saidEdward Henry to the child.

  He thought this rather funny, rather worthy of himself, but the childanswered with ruthless gravity and a touch of disdain, for he was adisdainful child, without bowels:

  "I don't know what you mean, Father." The curve of his lips (he had hisgrandmother's lips) appeared to say, "I wish you wouldn't try to besilly, Father." However, youth forgets very quickly, and the nextinstant Robert was beginning once more, "Father!"

  "Well, Robert?"

  By mutual agreement of the parents, the child was never addressed as"Bob" or "Bobby," or by any other diminutive. In their practicalopinion a child's name was his name, and ought not to be mauled ordismembered on the pretext of fondness. Similarly, the child had notbeen baptised after his father, or after any male member of either theMachin or the Cotterill family. Why should family names be perpetuatedmerely because they were family names? A natural human reaction, this,against the excessive sentimentalism of the Victorian era!

  "What does 'stamped out' mean?" Robert enquired.

  Now Robert, among other activities, busied himself in the collection ofpostage-stamps, and in consequence his father's mind, under the impulseof the question, ran immediately to postage-stamps.

  "Stamped out?" said Edward Henry, with the air of omniscience that afather is bound to assume. "Postage-stamps are stamped-out--by amachine--you see."

  Robert's scorn of this explanation was manifest.

  "Well," Edward Henry, piqued, made another attempt, "you stamp a fireout with your feet." And he stamped illustratively on the floor. Afterall, the child was only eight.

  "I knew all that before," said Robert coldly. "You don't understand."

  "What makes you ask, dear? Let us show Father your leg." Nellie'svoice was soothing.

  "Yes," Robert murmured, staring reflectively at the ceiling. "That'sit. It says in the encyclopedia that hydrophobia is stamped out in thiscountry--by Mr. Long's muzzling order. Who is Mr. Long?"

  A second bomb had fallen on exactly the same spot as the first, and thetwo exploded simultaneously. And the explosion was none the lessterrible because it was silent and invisible. The tidy domestic chamberwas strewn in a moment with an awful mass of wounded susceptibilities.Beyond the screen the _nick-nick_ of grandmother's steel needles stoppedand started again. It was characteristic of her temperament that sheshould recover before the younger generations could recover. EdwardHenry, as befitted his sex, regained his nerve a little earlier thanNellie.

  "I told you never to touch my encyclopedia," said he sternly. Roberthad twice been caught on his stomach on the floor with a vast volumeopen under his chin, and his studies had been traced by vilethumb-marks.

  "I know," said Rober
t.

  Whenever anybody gave that child a piece of unsolicited information, healmost invariably replied, "I know."

  "But hydrophobia!" cried Nellie. "How did you know about hydrophobia?"

  "We had it in spellings last week," Robert explained.

  "The deuce you did!" muttered Edward Henry.

  The one bright fact of the many-sided and gloomy crisis was the veryobvious truth that Robert was the most extraordinary child that everlived.

  "But when on earth did you get at the encyclopedia, Robert?" his motherexclaimed, completely at a loss.

  "It was before you came in from Hillport," the wondrous infant answered."After my leg had stopped hurting me a bit."

  "But when I came in Nurse said it had only just happened!"

  "Shows how much _she_ knew!" said Robert, with contempt.

  "Does your leg hurt you now?" Edward Henry enquired.

  "A bit. That's why I can't go to sleep, of course."

  "Well, let's have a look at it." Edward Henry attempted jollity.

  "Mother's wrapped it all up in boracic wool."

  The bed-clothes were drawn down and the leg gradually revealed. And thesight of the little soft leg, so fragile and defenceless, really didtouch Edward Henry. It made him feel more like an authentic father thanhe had felt for a long time. And the sight of the red wound hurt him.Still, it was a beautifully clean wound, and it was not a large wound.

  "It's a clean wound," he observed judiciously. In spite of himself, hecould not keep a certain flippant harsh quality out of his tone.

  "Well, I've naturally washed it with carbolic," Nellie returned sharply.

  He illogically resented this sharpness.

  "Of course he was bitten through his stocking?"

  "Of course," said Nellie, re-enveloping the wound hastily, as thoughEdward Henry was not worthy to regard it.

  "Well, then, by the time they got through the stocking, the animal'steeth couldn't be dirty. Every one knows that."

  Nellie shut her lips.

  "Were you teasing Carlo?" Edward Henry demanded curtly of his son.

  "I don't know."

  Whenever anybody asked that child for a piece of information, he almostinvariably replied, "I don't know."

  "How, you don't know? You must know whether you were teasing the dog ornot!" Edward Henry was nettled.

  The renewed spectacle of his own wound had predisposed Robert to feel agreat and tearful sympathy for himself. His mouth now began to takestrange shapes and to increase magically in area, and beads appeared inthe corners of his large eyes.

  "I--I was only measuring his tail by his hind leg," he blubbered, andthen sobbed.

  Edward Henry did his best to save his dignity.

  "Come, come!" he reasoned, less menacingly. "Boys who can readenyclopedias mustn't be cry-babies. You'd no business measuring Carlo'stail by his hind leg. You ought to remember that that dog's older thanyou." And this remark, too, he thought rather funny, but apparently hewas alone in his opinion.

  Then he felt something against his calf. And it was Carlo's nose.Carlo was a large, very shaggy and unkempt Northern terrier, but owingto vagueness of his principal points, due doubtless to a vagueness inhis immediate ancestry, it was impossible to decide whether he had comefrom the north or the south side of the Tweed. This aging friend ofEdward Henry's, surmising that something unusual was afoot in his house,and having entirely forgotten the trifling episode of the bite, hadunobtrusively come to make enquiries.

  "Poor old boy!" said Edward Henry, stooping to pat the dog. "Did theytry to measure his tail with his hind leg?"

  The gesture was partly instinctive, for he loved Carlo; but it also hadits origin in sheer nervousness, in sheer ignorance of what was the bestthing to do. However, he was at once aware that he had done the worstthing. Had not Nellie announced that the dog must be got rid of? Andhere he was fondly caressing the bloodthirsty dog! With a hystericalmovement of the lower part of her leg, Nellie pushed violently againstthe dog,--she did not kick, but she nearly kicked,--and Carlo, faintlyhowling a protest, fled.

  Edward Henry was hurt. He escaped from between the beds, and from thatclose, enervating domestic atmosphere where he was misunderstood bywomen and disdained by infants. He wanted fresh air; he wanted bars,whiskies, billiard-rooms, and the society of masculine men about town.The whole of his own world was against him.

  As he passed by his knitting mother, she ignored him and moved not. Shehad a great gift of holding aloof from conjugal complications.

  On the landing he decided that he would go out at once into the majorworld. Half-way down the stairs he saw his overcoat on the hall-stand,beckoning to him and offering release.

  Then he heard the bedroom door and his wife's footsteps.

  "Edward Henry!"

  "Well?"

  He stopped and looked up inimically at her face, which overhung thebanisters. It was the face of a woman outraged in her most profoundfeelings, but amazingly determined to be sweet.

  "What do you think of it?"

  "What do I think of what? The wound?"

  "Yes."

  "Why, it's simply nothing. Nothing at all. You know how that kid alwaysheals up quickly. You won't be able to find the wound in a day or two."

  "Don't you think it ought to be cauterised at once?"

  He moved downwards.

  "No, I don't. I've been bitten three times in my life by dogs, and Iwas never cauterised."

  "Well, I _do_ think it ought to be cauterised." She raised her voiceslightly as he retreated from her. "And I shall be glad if you'll callin at Dr. Stirling's and ask him to come round."

  He made no reply, but put on his overcoat and his hat, and took hisstick. Glancing up the stairs, he saw Nellie was now standing at thehead of them, under the electric light there, and watching him. He knewthat she thought he was cravenly obeying her command. She could have noidea that before she spoke to him he had already decided to put on hisovercoat and hat and take his stick and go forth into the major world.However, that was no affair of his.

  He hesitated a second. Then the nurse appeared out of the kitchen witha squalling Maisie in her arms, and ran up-stairs. Why Maisie wassqualling, and why she should have been in the kitchen at such an hourinstead of in bed, he could not guess; but he could guess that if heremained one second longer in that exasperating minor world he wouldbegin to smash furniture, and so he quitted it.