Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (112 page)

And Peter recounted the events of the preceding evening.

Tears gathered in the doctor’s small, round eyes. His absurd sentimentalism was the quality in his friend that most irritated Peter.

“Poor leedle waif!” murmured the soft-hearted old gentleman. “Id was de good Providence dat guided her — or him, whichever id be.”

“Providence be hanged!” snarled Peter. “What was my Providence doing — landing me with a gutter-brat to look after?”

“So like you Radicals,” sneered the doctor, “to despise a fellow human creature just because id may not have been born in burble and fine linen.”

“I didn’t send for you to argue politics,” retorted Peter, controlling his indignation by an effort. “I want you to tell me whether it’s a boy or a girl, so that I may know what to do with it.”

“What mean you to do wid id?” inquired the doctor.

“I don’t know,” confessed Peter. “If it’s a boy, as I rather think it is, maybe I’ll be able to find it a place in one of the offices — after I’ve taught it a little civilisation.”

“And if id be a girl?”

“How can it be a girl when it wears trousers?” demanded Peter. “Why anticipate difficulties?”

Peter, alone, paced to and fro the room, his hands behind his back, his ear on the alert to catch the slightest sound from above.

“I do hope it is a boy,” said Peter, glancing up.

Peter’s eyes rested on the photo of the fragile little woman gazing down at him from its stiff frame upon the chimney-piece. Thirty years ago, in this same room, Peter had paced to and fro, his hands behind his back, his ear alert to catch the slightest sound from above, had said to himself the same words.

“It’s odd,” mused Peter—”very odd indeed.”

The door opened. The stout doctor, preceded at a little distance by his watch-chain, entered and closed the door behind him.

“A very healthy child,” said the doctor, “as fine a child as any one could wish to see. A girl.”

The two old gentlemen looked at one another. Elizabeth, possibly relieved in her mind, began to purr.

“What am I to do with it?” demanded Peter.

“A very awkward bosition for you,” agreed the sympathetic doctor.

“I was a fool!” declared Peter.

“You haf no one here to look after de leedle wench when you are away,” pointed out the thoughtful doctor.

“And from what I’ve seen of the imp,” added Peter, “it will want some looking after.”

“I tink — I tink,” said the helpful doctor, “I see a way out!”

“What?”

The doctor thrust his fierce face forward and tapped knowingly with his right forefinger the right side of his round nose. “I will take charge of de leedle wench.”

“You?”

“To me de case will not present de same difficulties. I haf a housekeeper.”

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Whateley.”

“She is a goot woman when you know her,” explained the doctor. “She only wants managing.”

“Pooh!” ejaculated Peter.

“Why do you say dat?” inquired the doctor.

“You! bringing up a headstrong girl. The idea!”

“I should be kind, but firm.”

“You don’t know her.”

“How long haf you known her?”

“Anyhow, I’m not a soft-hearted sentimentalist that would just ruin the child.”

“Girls are not boys,” persisted the doctor; “dey want different treatment.”

“Well, I’m not a brute!” snarled Peter. “Besides, suppose she turns out rubbish! What do you know about her?”

“I take my chance,” agreed the generous doctor.

“It wouldn’t be fair,” retorted honest Peter.

“Tink it over,” said the doctor. “A place is never home widout de leedle feet. We Englishmen love de home. You are different. You haf no sentiment.”

“I cannot help feeling,” explained Peter, “a sense of duty in this matter. The child came to me. It is as if this thing had been laid upon me.”

“If you look upon id dat way, Peter,” sighed the doctor.

“With sentiment,” went on Peter, “I have nothing to do; but duty — duty is quite another thing.” Peter, feeling himself an ancient Roman, thanked the doctor and shook hands with him.

Tommy, summoned, appeared.

“The doctor, Tommy,” said Peter, without looking up from his writing, “gives a very satisfactory account of you. So you can stop.”

“Told you so,” returned Tommy. “Might have saved your money.”

“But we shall have to find you another name.”

“What for?”

“If you are to be a housekeeper, you must be a girl.”

“Don’t like girls.”

“Can’t say I think much of them myself, Tommy. We must make the best of it. To begin with, we must get you proper clothes.”

“Hate skirts. They hamper you.”

“Tommy,” said Peter severely, “don’t argue.”

“Pointing out facts ain’t arguing,” argued Tommy. “They do hamper you. You try ‘em.”

The clothes were quickly made, and after a while they came to fit; but the name proved more difficult of adjustment. A sweet-faced, laughing lady, known to fame by a title respectable and orthodox, appears an honoured guest to-day at many a literary gathering. But the old fellows, pressing round, still call her “Tommy.”

The week’s trial came to an end. Peter, whose digestion was delicate, had had a happy thought.

“What I propose, Tommy — I mean Jane,” said Peter, “is that we should get in a woman to do just the mere cooking. That will give you more time to — to attend to other things, Tommy — Jane, I mean.”

“What other things?” chin in the air.

“The — the keeping of the rooms in order, Tommy. The — the dusting.”

“Don’t want twenty-four hours a day to dust four rooms.”

“Then there are messages, Tommy. It would be a great advantage to me to have someone I could send on a message without feeling I was interfering with the housework.”

“What are you driving at?” demanded Tommy. “Why, I don’t have half enough to do as it is. I can do all—”

Peter put his foot down. “When I say a thing, I mean a thing. The sooner you understand that, the better. How dare you argue with me! Fiddle-de-dee!” For two pins Peter would have employed an expletive even stronger, so determined was he feeling.

Tommy without another word left the room. Peter looked at Elizabeth and winked.

Poor Peter! His triumph was short-lived. Five minutes later, Tommy returned, clad in the long, black skirt, supported by the cricket belt, the blue garibaldi cut
décolleté
, the pepper-and-salt jacket, the worsted comforter, the red lips very tightly pressed, the long lashes over the black eyes moving very rapidly.

“Tommy” (severely), “what is this tomfoolery?”

“I understand. I ain’t no good to you. Thanks for giving me a trial. My fault.”

“Tommy” (less severely), “don’t be an idiot.”

“Ain’t an idiot. ’Twas Emma. Told me I was good at cooking. Said I’d got an aptitude for it. She meant well.”

“Tommy” (no trace of severity), “sit down. Emma was quite right. Your cooking is — is promising. As Emma puts it, you have aptitude. Your — perseverance, your hopefulness proves it.”

“Then why d’ye want to get someone else in to do it?”

If Peter could have answered truthfully! If Peter could have replied:

“My dear, I am a lonely old gentleman. I did not know it until — until the other day. Now I cannot forget it again. Wife and child died many years ago. I was poor, or I might have saved them. That made me hard. The clock of my life stood still. I hid away the key. I did not want to think. You crept to me out of the cruel fog, awakened old dreams. Do not go away any more” — perhaps Tommy, in spite of her fierce independence, would have consented to be useful; and thus Peter might have gained his end at less cost of indigestion. But the penalty for being an anti-sentimentalist is that you must not talk like this even to yourself. So Peter had to cast about for other methods.

“Why shouldn’t I keep two servants if I like?” It did seem hard on the old gentleman.

“What’s the sense of paying two to do the work of one? You would only be keeping me on out of charity.” The black eyes flashed. “I ain’t a beggar.”

“And you really think, Tommy — I should say Jane, you can manage the — the whole of it? You won’t mind being sent on a message, perhaps in the very middle of your cooking. It was that I was thinking of, Tommy — some cooks would.”

“You go easy,” advised him Tommy, “till I complain of having too much to do.”

Peter returned to his desk. Elizabeth looked up. It seemed to Peter that Elizabeth winked.

The fortnight that followed was a period of trouble to Peter, for Tommy, her suspicions having been aroused, was sceptical of “business” demanding that Peter should dine with this man at the club, lunch with this editor at the Cheshire Cheese. At once the chin would go up into the air, the black eyes cloud threateningly. Peter, an unmarried man for thirty years, lacking experience, would under cross-examination contradict himself, become confused, break down over essential points.

“Really,” grumbled Peter to himself one evening, sawing at a mutton chop, “really there’s no other word for it — I’m henpecked.”

Peter that day had looked forward to a little dinner at a favourite restaurant, with his “dear old friend Blenkinsopp, a bit of a gourmet, Tommy — that means a man who likes what you would call elaborate cooking!” — forgetful at the moment that he had used up “Blenkinsopp” three days before for a farewell supper, “Blenkinsopp” having to set out the next morning for Egypt. Peter was not facile at invention. Names in particular had always been a difficulty to him.

“I like a spirit of independence,” continued Peter to himself. “Wish she hadn’t quite so much of it. Wonder where she got it from.”

The situation was becoming more serious to Peter than he cared to admit. For day by day, in spite of her tyrannies, Tommy was growing more and more indispensable to Peter. Tommy was the first audience that for thirty years had laughed at Peter’s jokes; Tommy was the first public that for thirty years had been convinced that Peter was the most brilliant journalist in Fleet Street; Tommy was the first anxiety that for thirty years had rendered it needful that Peter each night should mount stealthily the creaking stairs, steal with shaded candle to a bedside. If only Tommy wouldn’t “do” for him! If only she could be persuaded to “do” something else.

Another happy thought occurred to Peter.

“Tommy — I mean Jane,” said Peter, “I know what I’ll do with you.”

“What’s the game now?”

“I’ll make a journalist of you.”

“Don’t talk rot.”

“It isn’t rot. Besides, I won’t have you answer me like that. As a Devil — that means, Tommy, the unseen person in the background that helps a journalist to do his work — you would be invaluable to me. It would pay me, Tommy — pay me very handsomely. I should make money out of you.”

This appeared to be an argument that Tommy understood. Peter, with secret delight, noticed that the chin retained its normal level.

“I did help a chap to sell papers, once,” remembered Tommy; “he said I was fly at it.”

“I told you so,” exclaimed Peter triumphantly. “The methods are different, but the instinct required is the same. We will get a woman in to relieve you of the housework.”

The chin shot up into the air.

“I could do it in my spare time.”

“You see, Tommy, I should want you to go about with me — to be always with me.”

“Better try me first. Maybe you’re making an error.”

Peter was learning the wisdom of the serpent.

“Quite right, Tommy. We will first see what you can do. Perhaps, after all, it may turn out that you are better as a cook.” In his heart Peter doubted this.

But the seed had fallen upon good ground. It was Tommy herself that manoeuvred her first essay in journalism. A great man had come to London — was staying in apartments especially prepared for him in St. James’s Palace. Said every journalist in London to himself: “If I could obtain an interview with this Big Man, what a big thing it would be for me!” For a week past, Peter had carried everywhere about with him a paper headed: “Interview of Our Special Correspondent with Prince Blank,” questions down left-hand column, very narrow; space for answers right-hand side, very wide. But the Big Man was experienced.

“I wonder,” said Peter, spreading the neatly folded paper on the desk before him, “I wonder if there can be any way of getting at him — any dodge or trick, any piece of low cunning, any plausible lie that I haven’t thought of.”

“Old Man Martin — called himself Martini — was just such another,” commented Tommy. “Come pay time, Saturday afternoon, you just couldn’t get at him — simply wasn’t any way. I was a bit too good for him once, though,” remembered Tommy, with a touch of pride in her voice; “got half a quid out of him that time. It did surprise him.”

“No,” communed Peter to himself aloud, “I don’t honestly think there can be any method, creditable or discreditable, that I haven’t tried.” Peter flung the one-sided interview into the wastepaper-basket, and slipping his notebook into his pocket, departed to drink tea with a lady novelist, whose great desire, as stated in a postscript to her invitation, was to avoid publicity, if possible.

Tommy, as soon as Peter’s back was turned, fished it out again.

An hour later in the fog around St. James’s Palace stood an Imp, clad in patched trousers and a pepper-and-salt jacket turned up about the neck, gazing with admiring eyes upon the sentry.

“Now, then, young seventeen-and-sixpence the soot,” said the sentry, “what do you want?”

“Makes you a bit anxious, don’t it,” suggested the Imp, “having a big pot like him to look after?”

“Does get a bit on yer mind, if yer thinks about it,” agreed the sentry.

“How do you find him to talk to, like?”

“Well,” said the sentry, bringing his right leg into action for the purpose of relieving his left, “ain’t ‘ad much to do with ‘im myself, not person’ly, as yet. Oh, ‘e ain’t a bad sort when yer know ‘im.”

“That’s his shake-down, ain’t it?” asked the Imp, “where the lights are.”

“That’s it,” admitted sentry. “You ain’t an Anarchist? Tell me if you are.”

“I’ll let you know if I feel it coming on,” the Imp assured him.