Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (204 page)

She put her hands upon his shoulders and gave him a little shake.

“I’m talking to you for your good,” she said. “I like you. Don’t ever let him get the mastery over you. If he does, God help you.”

She looked at her watch.

“I must be off,” she said.

Anthony laughed.

“So like a woman,” he said; “thinks that when she has said all that she’s got to say that there’s nothing more to be said.”

“You shall have your say another time,” she promised him.

Anthony kept on the house in Bruton Square. It was larger than they wanted now the Tetteridges were gone, but he liked the old-fashioned square with its ancient rookery among the tall elms. He let the big class-room for an office to a young architect who had lately come to Millsborough. His aunt was delighted with the change. She had hated Mrs. Tetteridge, who had disapproved of her sitting on sunny afternoons on a Windsor chair outside the front door. It had always been her habit. And why what was harmless in Moor End Lane should be sinful in Bruton Square she could not understand. She was growing feeble. It was want of work, according to her own idea, which was probably correct. As a consequence she was looking forward to heaven with less eagerness.

“I used to think it would be just lovely,” she confessed to Anthony one day, “sitting about and doing nothing for ever and ever. It sounds ungrateful, but upon my word I’m not so sure that I’ll enjoy it.”

“Uncle did believe in God,” said Anthony. “I had a talk with him before he died. ‘There must be somebody bossing it all,’ he said. His hope was that God might think him of some use and find him a job.”

“He was a good man, your uncle,” answered his aunt. “I used to worry myself about him. But perhaps, after all, the Lord ain’t as unreasonable as He’s made out to be.”

Mr. Mowbray was leaving the business more and more to Anthony. As a compensation for denial in other directions he was allowing himself too much old port, and the gout was getting hold of him. Betty took him abroad as much as possible. Travelling interested him, and, away from his old cronies, he was easier to manage. He had always adored his children, and Betty, in spite of his failings, could not help being fond of him. Anthony knew that so long as her father lived she would never marry. Neither was he in any hurry. The relationship between them was that of a restful comradeship; and marriage could have made but little difference. Meanwhile the firm of Mowbray and Cousins was prospering. The private business was almost entirely in the hands of old Johnson, the head clerk. It was to his numerous schemes for the building up of Millsborough that Anthony devoted himself. The port of Millsborough was already an accomplished fact and its success assured. A syndicate for the construction of an electric tramway running from the docks to the farthest end of the densely populated valley had already got to work. A yet more important project was now in Anthony’s mind. Hitherto Millsborough had been served by a branch line from a junction fifteen miles away. Anthony wanted a new track that should cross the river to the west of the new lock and, skirting the coast, rejoin the main line beyond the moor. It would bring Millsborough on to the main line and shorten the distance between London and the north by over an hour. It was the name of Mowbray that figured upon all documents, but Millsborough knew that the brain behind was Mowbray’s junior partner, young Strong’nth’arm. Millsborough, believing in luck, put its money on him.

The Coomber family had returned to The Abbey somewhat unexpectedly. No tenant for the house had come forward. Also Sir Harry had come into an unexpected legacy. It was not much, but with economy it would enable them to keep up the old place. It had been the home of the Coomber family for many generations, and Sir Harry, not expecting to live long, was wishful to die there.

Mr. Mowbray was away, and old Johnson, the head clerk, had gone up to The Abbey to welcome them home and talk a little business.

“I doubt if they’ll be able to pull through,” he said to Anthony on his return to the office. “The grounds are all going to rack and ruin, to say nothing about the outbuildings and the farm. Even to keep it up as it is will take two thousand a year; and it doesn’t seem to me that, after paying the interest on the mortgage, he’ll have as much as that left altogether.”

“What does he say himself?” asked Anthony. “Does he grasp it?”

“Oh, after me the deluge!’ seems to be his idea,” answered old Johnson. “Reckons he isn’t going to live for more than two years, and may just as well live there. Talks of shutting up most of the rooms and eking out existence on the produce of the kitchen garden.” He laughed.

“And Lady Coomber?” asked Anthony.

“Oh, well, he’s fortunate there,” answered Johnson. “Give her a blackbird to sing to her and a few flowers to look after and you haven’t got to worry about her. Don’t see how they’re going to manage about the boy.”

“He’s in the army, isn’t he?” said Anthony.

“In the Guards,” answered Johnson. “They must be mad. Of course, they’ve any amount of rich connexions. But I don’t see their coming forward to that extent.”

“He’ll have to exchange,” suggested Anthony. “Get out to India.”

“Or else they’ll starve themselves to try and keep it up,” answered Johnson. “Funny thing, you can never get any sense into these old families. It’s the inter-breeding, I suppose. Of course, there’s the girl. She may perhaps put them on their legs again.”

“By marrying some rich old bug?” said Anthony.

“Or rich young one,” answered Johnson. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more lovely. I expect that’s why they’ve come back, if the truth were told. If her aunt took her up and ran her for a season in London there oughtn’t to be much difficulty.”

“Except perhaps the girl,” suggested Anthony.

“Oh, they look at things differently in that class,” answered old Johnson. “They’ve got to.”

The house and shop in Platts Lane where Anthony had been born had been taken over by the old jobbing tinker and his half-witted son. The old man had never been of much use, but the boy had developed into a clever mechanic. Bicycles were numerous now in Millsborough, and he had gained the reputation of being the best man in the town for repairing them and generally putting them to rights. A question of repairs to the workshop had arisen. The property belonged to a client of Mowbray’s, and Mr. Johnson was giving instructions to a clerk to call at the place on his way back from lunch and see what was wanted, when Anthony entered the room.

“I’m going that way,” he said. “I’ll call myself.”

Anthony stopped his cab a few streets off. He had carefully avoided this neighbourhood of sordid streets since the day he and his mother had finally left it behind them. The spirit of hopelessness seemed brooding there. The narrow, grimy house where he was born was unchanged. The broken window in the room where his father had died had never yet been mended. The square of brown paper that he himself had cut out and pasted over the hole had worn well.

Anthony knocked at the door. It was opened by a slatternly woman, the wife of a neighbour. Old Joe Witlock was in bed with a cold. It was his son’s fault, he explained. Matthew would insist on the workshop door being always left open. He would give no reason, but as it was he who practically earned the living his father thought it best to humour him. The old man was pleased to see Anthony, and they talked for a while about old days. Anthony explained his visit. It was the roof of the workshop that wanted repairing. Anthony went out again and round by the front way. The door was wide open, so that passing along the street one could see into the workshop. Matthew was repairing a bicycle. He had grown into a well-built, good-looking young man. It was only about the eyes that one noticed anything peculiar. He recognized Anthony at once and they shook hands. Anthony was looking up at the roof when he heard a movement and turned round. A girl was sitting on a stool behind the open door. It was the very stool that Anthony himself had been used to sit upon as a child, watching his father at his work. It was Miss Coomber. She held out her hand with a laugh.

“Father sent me out of the room last time I saw you,” she said, “without introducing us. I am Eleanor Coomber. You are Mr. Anthony Strong’nth’arm, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” answered Anthony. “I heard you had returned to The Abbey.”

“I was coming to see you — or rather Mr. Johnson,” she said, “with a letter from father; but I ran into a cart at the bottom of the hill. I’m really only a beginner,” she added by way of excuse.

“Then you ought not to ride down steep hills,” said Anthony, “especially not in a town.”

“I’ll get off at The Three Carpenters next time,” she said, “if you promise not to tell.”

Anthony took the letter and promised to deliver it. “You’ve come back for good, haven’t you?” he asked.

“Tell me,” she said. “You do know all about it, don’t you? Do you think we shall be able to? I do love it.”

Anthony was silent for a moment. She was evidently hanging on his answer.

“It’s possible,” he said, “with strict economy.”

She laughed as though relieved.

“Oh, that!” she said. “We’re used enough to that.”

Matthew was blowing the furnace. The light from the glowing embers flickered round them.

“You were born here, weren’t you?” she asked.

“In the house adjoining, to be exact,” he answered with a laugh. “But this was my nursery. I used to sit on that very stool with my leg tucked underneath me watching my father work. I loved it when he blew the bellows and made the shadows dance. At least I expect it’s the same stool,” he added. “There was the figure of a gnome that a strange old fellow I once knew carved upon it.”

She sprang to the ground and examined it. “Yes,” she said. “It is the same. He must have been quite clever.”

She reseated herself upon it. Her feet just touched the ground.

“I was born in Brazil,” she said. “Father had a ranch near Rio. But we left there before I was three. The first thing I can really remember is The Abbey. We must have come on a visit, I suppose, to Sir William. It was the long garden between the cloister walls that was my first nursery. I used to play there with the flowers and make them talk to me.”

“I saw you there,” he said, “one afternoon.” She looked up at him. “When was that?” she asked.

“Oh, one evening in September,” he said. “About two years ago.” He had spoken without premeditation and now felt himself flushing. He hoped she might think it only the glow from the furnace fire.

“But we were in Florence,” she said.

“I know,” he answered, flushing still deeper. “I asked old Wilkins when you had come back, and he thought I was mad.”

“It is curious,” she answered gravely. “I dreamed one day that I was walking there and met your namesake, Anthony the Monk. He was standing by the wicket gate on the very spot where he was slain. He called to me, but I was frightened and hid myself among the flowers.”

Anthony was interested.

“Who was the Monk Anthony?” he asked.

“Don’t you know the story?” she said. “He was the son of one Giles Strong’nth’arm and Martha his wife, according to the records of the monastery. It seems to have been a common name in the neighbourhood, but I expect you were all one family. The abbot had died suddenly of a broken heart. It was the time of the confiscation of the monasteries by Henry VIII, and the monks had chosen Anthony to act for them although he was the youngest of them all. He spent all night upon his knees, and when our ancestor arrived in the morning with his men-at-arms he met them at the great door of the chapel — it was where the rose garden is now — and refused to let them pass. The soldiers murmured and hesitated, for he had made of his outstretched arms a Cross, and a light, it was said, shone round about him. They would have turned and fled. But it was to our ancestor, Percival de Combler — as it was then spelt — that The Abbey and its lands had been granted, and he was not the man to let it slip from his hands. He spurred his horse forward and struck down the Monk Anthony with one blow of his sword. And they rode their horses over his body and into the chapel.”

“No,” said Anthony. “I never heard the story. It always troubled my father, any talk about what his people had once been.”

“You’re so like him,” she said. “It struck me the first time I saw you. You were sitting by the window writing. One of Sir Percival’s young squires, who had been a student in Holland, made a picture of him from memory as he had stood with his arms outstretched in the form of a Cross. Remind me next time you come to The Abbey and I’ll show it you. It hangs in the library.”

Matthew had finished. Anthony would not let her mount in the town. He insisted that she should wait until they got to The Three Carpenters, and walked beside her wheeling the bicycle. Her desire was to become an expert rider. A horse of her own was, of course, out of the question, and she had never cared for walking. They talked about The Abbey and the lonely moorland round about it.

One of the misfortunes of being poor was that you could do so little to help people. The moor folk had been used to look to The Abbey as a sort of permanent Lady Bountiful. The late Sir William had always been open-handed. She did what she could. There was an old bedridden labourer who lived in a lonely cottage with his granddaughter. The girl had suddenly left him and there was no one to look after him. He could just crawl about and feed himself, but that was all. Anthony’s conscience smote him. Betty was away. The old man was one of her pensioners and he had promised to keep an eye on them till she came back. They arranged to meet there. He would see about getting some help.

CHAPTER XI

IT came so suddenly that neither of them at first knew what had happened. A few meetings among the lonely byways of the moor that they had honestly persuaded themselves were by mere chance. A little walking side by side where the young leaves brushed their faces and the young ferns hid their feet. A little laughing, when the April showers would catch them lost in talk, and hand in hand they would race for the shelter of some overhanging bank and crouch close pressed against each other among the twisted roots of the stunted firs. A little lingering on the homeward way, watching the horned moon climb up above the woods, while the song of some late lark filled all the world around them. Until one evening, having said good-bye though standing with their hands still clasped, she had raised her face to his and he had drawn her to him and their lips had met.