Mord Em'ly/Chapter 11

gave so much satisfaction as a vegetable girl in the kitchen at the back of Mrs. Mitchell's dining-rooms that in a few weeks she, to her great content, was promoted to the position of assistant waitress. Here her natural alertness made her useful; the work suited her, and the patrons, finding that her serving was preferable to that of Miss Mitchell, who waited upon them with the languid air of a duchess reduced in circumstances, showed signs of preference, and some would stay in retreat behind newspapers until Mord Em'ly became free to take their orders. She was a frank little person, too, and did not hesitate to mention (in confidence) when a certain dish was undesirable.

"Order it, if you like," Mord Em'ly would say, "but it's a bit off colour to-day, and that's a fact."

Services of this nature are worth paying for, and Mord Em'ly found, in the aggregate, so many pennies left by the side of emptied plates, that the noise made by her money-box when she chinked the contents every night was to her like music from a large orchestra. She returned to Miss Gilliken a half-crown which she had borrowed; the next five shillings went to her mother, "From your loving daughter," with no address. (That evening, the rumour went about in Block C of Pandora that Mord Em'ly's mother had received a bank note of immense value, and that the titled lady in the West End house where Mord Em'ly gave her services was treating the young lady more like a sister than anything else.) After that, for a time Mord Em'ly devoted the money to her own adornment, beginning with a purchase of calico, and ending, after long and careful thrift and equally careful disbursement, with a hat, that even Miss Mitchell, a stern critic in such matters, felt bound to acknowledge was not altogether unbecoming; going, indeed, further than this by permitting Mord Em'ly to accompany her on a Sunday afternoon to Greenwich Park. Miss Mitchell was not one young lady, but two; the first, with a sharp voice and manner for her stout mother, the dependants in the kitchen, and for working-men customers; the second, with a tired voice and an air of boredom for the nobility of New Cross, and for distinguished strangers. She had a gruesome knowledge of German royalty, and on Sundays she wore pince-nez.

Mord Em'ly was busily serving the customers in the various pews, taking orders, and running to the back to hurry the cook with encouragement and reproach, finding newspapers for those desirous of combining study with restoration of the body, telling an insurgent match-boy to get outside before she forced him to do so, and keeping ever a watchful eye on departing customers, when a youth, of medium height, broad-shouldered, bullet-headed, square-chinned, pushed open the glass doors, and looked round. He appeared so well dressed, in a suit of tweeds, that Miss Mitchell went forward and told him, pleasantly, that it was a fine day, and that it would be, in all probability, most awfully charming down at the seaside.

Mord Em'ly found herself called to the rear of the long room by a narrow-faced customer, who had several times endeavoured to engage the busy little woman in conversation, and the tweed suit youth ordered the most expensive dish on the bill of fare.

"Miss," said the narrow-faced man, in the furthest pew, "what's the damage?"

Mord Em'ly made a swift mental calculation.

"Two breads?" she asked.

He nodded.

That'll be 'levenpence altogether," said Mord Em'ly quickly. "Penny change, thank you."

"Never 'eard me hold forth on the Broadway, 'ave you?" asked the narrow-faced man, taking his soft hat from a peg on the varnished wall. "Do you go in for politics at all, may I ask?"

"Got no time for politics," said Mord Em'ly briskly. "I leave that to them that's silly enough to bother their 'eads about it."

"The aperthy of the million," said the narrow-faced man gloomily, "is one of the strongest enemies we have to fight against."

"Aperthy or no aperthy," remarked Mord Em'ly, "it's a game I don't play at. What are you, Mr. Wetherell? Radical, or the other side?"

"Neither!" said the man, pulling at his red tie. "They're both as bad as one another."

"That's all right, then," said Mord Em'ly cheerfully. "That settles them."

"I belong to those," said Mr. Wetherell, raising his voice, "that are on the side of the down-trodden and the oppressed; I am on the side of the slaves of labour; I am on the side of every man 'aving his full pay for a fair day's work, and less of it going into the swollen pockets of that 'ydra-'eaded monster, Capital; I am on the side—"

"You're also a bit in the way," said Mord Em'ly. "Let that boy pass, why don't you?"

"Deptford Broadway," said Mr. Wetherell, "twelve-thirty, next Sunday mornin', I shall be dealing with 'Tawpics of the Week.’" "I shall be dealing with my dinner."

"Sunday after, then," urged Mr. Wetherell. "It's a chance you ought not to miss."

"I shall see," said Mord Em'ly, walking down to the door with him. "Are you very amusing."

"Amusing?" echoed Mr. Wetherell crossly. "I'm sarcastic, and I'm bitter, and I'm eeronical, but as to—" "I daresay that's just as good," said Mord Em'ly. "Mind the mat."

Mord Em'ly paid money over the counter to Mrs. Mitchell, reciting quickly a list of dishes as she did so, and the stout lady gave a nod at the end, as auditor's certificate, and swept the cash into the drawer.

"May I trouble you for the salt, miss?"

"Certainly, sir."

She took a salt-cellar to the tweed suit young man, and placed it on the table, without looking at him.

"Had some money left you?" asked the young man, in a deep voice.

"Wish I had," replied Mord Em'ly. "What makes you ask?"

"Seem to 'ave forgot all your old friends. 'Member me, don't you? 'Enry Barden, formerly on the Chatham and Dover; now champion light-weight of South London at—" "Well, I am glad to see you," said Mord Em'ly, shaking hands. "I've thought of you more'n once, all this time."

"So've I of you," said Mr. Barden, flushing, "I saw you off, didn't I, when you went away to—"

"’Ush!" whispered Mord Em'ly.

"When you went away," said Mr. Barden, in a louder tone, "to that farm-'ouse in the country, that belonged to some friends of your'n."

"I recollect."

"And 'aven't you improved, too?" went on Mr. Barden. "I was doing some boxing round 'ere the other night, in the 'Atcham Park Road, with two young gentlemen from Blackheath, and, passing by, I caught sight of your face over them short wire blinds, and I says to myself, 'That ain't Mord Em'ly,' I says. And, walking 'ome to the Kennington Road, where I live now, I thought over it again, and I says to myself, 'Barden, old chap, you're wrong for once. That was Mord Em'ly.’"

Mord Em'ly darted off to secure payment from a customer who had finished his meal, and came back again.

"They don't know about the 'Ome," she whispered, "nor about mother, nor nothing."

"I twigged that. Who was that chap that went out jest now, you seemed so friendly with?"

"Only a customer."

"Demd lively-looking customer, too," remarked Mr. Barden, with emphasis. "Got a face on him like 'alf-past six."

"Better language, please," said Mord Em'ly tartly, "If you want to come 'ere again."

"Beg pardon! It slipped out in the 'eat of the moment."

"And you'll 'ave to slip out in the 'eat of the moment, too, if you ain't careful. If you must know, he's a Mr. Wetherell, and he's a political kind of gentleman, and belongs to a club down in Deptford."

"I fancied he seemed rather inclined to be over-sociable," said Mr. Barden carefully. "But I s'pose you get all sorts in a place like this. Do you 'ave your Sundays clear?"

"Rather!"

"Let's go somewhere—"

"Drop me a note," said Mord Em'ly. "I generally go for a stroll with Miss Mitchell over there."

"You'll find me better company than Miss Mitchell," said Mr. Barden.

"You ain't walkin' out with any other gels?" she inquired suddenly.

"Gels!" said Mr. Barden strenuously. "I 'ate the very sight of 'em."

To Mord Em'ly's openly-expressed astonishment, Mr. Barden, on the following Sunday afternoon, was discovered near the Observatory, at the top of the hill in Greenwich Park, when Miss Mitchell and Mord Em'ly had finished the steep ascent. Miss Mitchell, wearing rings outside her gloves, and fanning herself with her closed parasol, complained a good deal of the large number of people who were strolling in the broad avenue leading to Blackheath. They made the place so awfully cheap (said Miss Mitchell), and didn't Mr. Barden think so?

"The great drawback about New Cross," said Miss Mitchell languidly, "is that there is no seeciety which you can call select. What I mean to say is, the classes are mixed up so."

"It's a noosance," said Mr. Barden, stroking Mord Em'ly's sleeve furtively, "when it's like that."

"You go to a dance in the neighbourhood," said Miss Mitchell loftily, "and what happens? I say, what happens?"

Mr. Barden shook his head knowingly, to indicate that society dances had no secrets from him.

"Why," declared the young lady oratorically, "whereas on the one side there may be a few in your set that you are not altogether unpleased to meet, yet on the other side there are some who, if you met them out afterwards, would shake 'ands with their gloves on, and never make no mention of no apology."

Mr. Barden looked at his hands nervously, and found, to his relief, that, being ungloved, he had escaped disaster.

"Something ought to be done," said Mr. Barden vaguely. "Someone ought to step in."

"And then, again," complained Miss Mitchell "people are so cleeky."

"So how much?" inquired Mord Em'ly.

"Cleeky," repeated Miss Mitchell. "Military people especially are neetorious for their cleekiness. Look down on everybody else."

"Can't stand them kind," said Mr. Barden. "Do you go into society much, miss?"

"I know as much about it," replied Miss Mitchell evasively, "as them that do. A tale I was reading of the other day, about a marchioness, and a artist, and—"

"Ah!" remarked Mr. Barden, with great relish, "that's the sort. You can always rely on a marchioness to be up to something or other."

"Artists, too, seem to get about a good deal," remarked Miss Mitchell condescendingly. "Always poppin' up in books, at any rate."

"Can't say I've been exactly what you may call 'and and glove with many artists."

"There's something very gentlemanly about them," said Miss Mitchell thoughtfully, "only they appear to be rather— What shall I say?"

"’Aughty?" suggested Mr. Barden.

"Oh, no! Not that."

"Stand-offish?"

"Oh, dear, no! Nothing like that."

Mr. Barden, abashed at his want of success, did not again offer a word.

"Inconstant! That's the word I wanted. Inconstant! They're here to-day and gone to-morrow, if you understand what I mean, and nobody knows their real name, or whether they're already—"

"Look 'ere," interrupted Mord Em'ly impatiently, "we're 'aving a jolly lot of talk. I prepose a run down the grass bank of the 'ill."

Later in the afternoon, when they watched the golden sun disappearing behind the College and the Hospital, and saw the ships going, like stately swans, down the winding river, Miss Mitchell's stock of aristocratic conversation petered out, and Mr. Warden found an opportunity to take Mord Em'ly's arm, and to whisper that he had seen her mother, and had told her he knew where Mord Em'ly was, but had declined to give the address. Being thus very near to Mord Em'ly's soft cheek, he kissed her, and for his assurance was severely punched. They walked down to Tea pot Row, and Mr. Warden insisted upon standing tea and shrimps in an arbour at the back of one of the houses, where young couples ate out of each other's plates, and sat at tea with their arms round each other's necks. A waiter, who looked several hundred years old, attended on them in a dress suit, and called the ladies “Madam," and Mord Em'ly felt that now, at any rate, she was in an admirable sphere. She took some pains to notice how the most refined young ladies in the garden dealt with the shrimps before them, and, at some inconvenience, imitated their dainty course of procedure; in drinking from the tea cups she found that etiquette demanded the little finger should be curved, and with this, too, she complied. After tea, Mr. Barden smoked a cigar, and Miss Mitchell, reviving, told them of her excursions into high life, which seemed to have been rather cheap excursions, with a return ticket available only for the hour of issue, but gave the impression that Miss Mitchell was well equipped, and that, opportunity given, she could hold her own anywhere. A tram took them to the dining-rooms, and carried Mr. Barden away to the Elephant. Miss Mitchell, in her room, as she used all the suggestions that she had ever heard of for preserving an aristocratic whiteness to the hands, called out to Mord Em'ly, before going to bed, that her friend was really more of a gentleman than might have been expected, considering, and that she had met worse manners amongst the better-breds.

"Never been engaged, have you?" called Miss Mitchell.

"No fear," answered Mord Em'ly. "’Ave you?"

"Hundreds of times," declared Miss Mitchell. "At least, I say hundreds. Twice, at any rate."

"I don't see no great catch in binding yourself down to anyone special."

"They give you presents," urged Miss Mitchell. "Pairs of gloves, and so forth."

"I can buy all the gloves I want," said Mord Em'ly sturdily.

"And it's nice to have someone to write letters to, you see; and it also gives you a kind of rather nice anxiety over the post in the morning. First young gentleman I was engaged to used to write me twice a day—morning and evening."

"How long did that last?"

"’Bout three weeks."

"Ah!" said Mord Em'ly.

"I took some objection to a necktie he was wearing," called out Miss Mitchell, "and he got huffy over it, and so we simply bid each other farewell, and I sent back his presents, and he sent me back mine. Don't you think my hands are much whiter since I've been using this vinegar wash?"

Miss Mitchell exhibited, through the open door of Mord Em'ly's room, two large, red hands, the size and colour of which were subjects for Miss Mitchell's eternal regret.

"Like alibaster," said Mord Em'ly sleepily. "Goo' night."

Mr. Barden was not allowed to monopolise the precious Sundays. Mord Em'ly sometimes resented his calm air of proprietorship, and evaded him by going to church, a sanctuary to which the young boxing man could not bring himself to follow her. At this church, where the service was so high that it nearly reached to Rome, Mord Em'ly experienced for the first time the unique emotion that an impressive service, with a faint odour of burnt incense, and fervid appeals from an earnest young preacher, manage to create. She found that the services gave her a mystic enjoyment that she could not attempt to define, but it enabled her to understand why the nursing sisters who used to come to Pandora from a neighbouring church always had happy faces. It was after these services that she used to think of her mother, and to feel that she ought to go and see her—a prospect that became modified by consideration.

"After all," Mord Em'ly would say to herself, "we're better friends apart. I'll send her another little postal order next week."

The sudden engagement of Miss Mitchell to a young hairdresser, for whom that young lady found an ardent affection, mainly because his Christian name was Reginald, forced Mord Em'ly to reconsider her position. The week-days were so busily occupied that they demanded no consideration; it was only Sundays that called for management—so much, indeed, that the little woman sometimes dreaded their approach. In the week melancholy claimed her only at the occasional periods when customers were few at Mitchell's dining-rooms, and refused to be lured by its enticing oblong slips, or its exposition of eatables in the window. At such times (which arrived rarely) the stout proprietress would endeavour to speed the lazy minutes by describing the funeral of her husband, done years agone at the cost of twelve pound ten, at Brockley Cemetery, on a day of which every detail was fresh and green in the old lady's mind. Sometimes Mrs. Mitchell would, if in very good spirits, review other funerals that she had had the good luck to attend; they evidently stood in her life as the only things really worth remembering. But ordinary days were filled, from an early hour until one sufficiently late, and the stout proprietress delighted at watching the alert Mord Em'ly, and, impressed by the contrast between the two girls, took care that she was rewarded by the best food from the dining rooms.

"I've cut you a nice little bit off the scrump, me dear, and you take this 'alf bottle of stout, and you go over there, and eat it all comfortable, and let me and Rosie see to the work for 'alf a hour. You mustn't run yourself off your feet, you know. Rosie, come 'ere this minute. Put that pen and ink and letter-paper away, and come 'ere this very minute, miss." A long-drawn sigh. "Nobody'd ever think you was a daughter of mine."

Mord Em'ly, despatched one Sunday morning to Deptford to buy a Lloyd's for Mrs. Mitchell, and a Ladies' Fashions for Miss Mitchell, found herself stopped near the Broadway by the sound of Mr. Wetherell's voice. She went across, and, at the edge of the small crowd, listened. There were several groups on the triangular space; one around a man selling birds; another listening, in a casual way, to a Russian, who, with a strong accent, was denouncing the laws of England: "You air the vorst gind of shlaves, my goot frients; you are shlaves mitout knowing dot you are shlaves"; another crowd formed a semi-circle near a straight line of gloomy-looking young men, in the middle of which line was Mr. Wetherell, standing on a Windsor chair. He was bare-headed; he had an action of pushing his hand through his straight hair, which gave him an astonished appearance; his face was crimson, and his forehead was wet. Mord Em'ly felt impressed by his oratory. She had no idea that he knew so many words; the sentences he threw impetuously at his crowd seemed to her so admirable and so conclusive that it surprised her to find the crowd quite calm and unconcerned. One might have thought that they had heard it all before. She felt a kind of reflected glory in the fact that she knew this crimson-faced, excited orator, now telling the House of Commons, in a fierce shout, exactly what he thought of it, and screaming a sentence of defiance against the Prime Minister. When, in conclusion, he said that he gloried in the protests that he had that morning made, and that, if this so-called Government liked to send him to a martyr's scaffold for expressing his opinions, he, for his part, was ready, Mord Em'ly held her breath, fearing the Government might instantly appear and act upon the suggestion. But nobody moved; one or two people in the crowd winked at each other; and a young man by the side of Wetherell whispered to him, impatiently, that he had gone over his ten minutes. Mord Em'ly felt glad that Wetherell was safe, and shook hands with him when he came round to her, in a dazed, respectful way.

"It takes it out of you," he said, mopping his forehead exhaustedly, "open-air more than indoors. What did you think of it?"

"I liked what I 'eard," answered Mord Em'ly. "You've got a louder voice than I thought. Carries further than this one does, at any rate."

"Him?" said Wetherell, glancing contemptuously at his furious successor. "Him? Why, he can't talk for nuts. You must come and 'ear me at one of our evening meetings when I'm in form."

"I shouldn't mind."

"Of course, you needn't adopt our teenets unless you like."

"Oh," said Mord Em'ly, puzzled. "That's optional, is it? Place doesn't get over-crowded, I s'pose?"

"That's the worst of it," complained the orator. "The job is to get a good ordience, especially these fine evenings. They come in a bit when it's wet, but they don't come then out of any love for the cause."

"And how d'you manage to think of all these things to say?" inquired Mord Em'ly curiously. "If I was to get up to speak, I shouldn't be able to say a single word."

"You've to be born like it," said Mr. Wetherell, with proud modesty.

"And do you always make the same speech?"

"No," snapped the young man fiercely, "I don't always make the same speech. Who's been telling you that?"

"Nobody," said Mord Em'ly. "I only asked the question."

"Oh, all right," he said, relenting, "I thought people might 'ave been saying things about me behind me back. Shall I be outside your place at seven to-night?"

"If you like."

That evening Mord Em'ly did not go to the meeting in Deptford, because Wetherell was a few minutes late, and Henry Barden being outside the dining-rooms when Mord Em'ly appeared, she walked away in the direction of Lewisham High Road with him, having no serious battle with her conscience on account of the tardy and disappointed politician. The two young men belonged to opposite types, with this special and striking difference: that whereas, with Wetherell, the opportunities for speaking were few, with Henry Barden the reverse was the case. Lately he had talked once or twice about Melbourne, but upon Mord Em'ly remarking that she did not believe in foreign places, and that London was good enough for her, he had resumed his usual rôle of listener, leaving to her the task of keeping up the conversation.

When Mr. Barden returned his charge to the doors of the shuttered dining-rooms, he made, rather hesitatingly, his first important remark of the evening. A contest with a Hoxton youth, at Flops's Gymnasium, was impending—a contest written about in the sporting papers, and he had been more silent than usual. An Australian gentleman had offered to back Henry Barden, and aggressive paragraphs had appeared in the Sporting Life.

"What night is this affair of yours?" asked Mord Em'ly.

"Tuesday."

"’Ope you'll win."

"So do I," said Mr. Barden. He coughed and hesitated. "Talking of fights," he said, "guess what I 'eard the other evening."

"Give it up," said Mord Em'ly.

"Why, I 'eard a chap saying that your father—that's the words he used—your father was out, and about again."

"Puzzle him to," said Mord Em'ly lightly. "He's been dead and buried this fourteen year."

"Sure?" asked Mr. Barden.

"Should I say so if I wasn't?" she demanded. "Someone's been takin a rise out of you, 'Enry."