Mr. Tasker's Gods (13 page)

M
ILL STREET in Portstown had changed its character, though Mrs. Fancy still lived there. The street was not the same, had not been the same since that night when poor forlorn Alice crawled to the empty seat under the tree. A social worker, a mild-eyed, merry young person, more determined than she looked, and always brimming over with hatred against any injustice to women, had penetrated to Mill Street and had even dared to enter the upper room of the
boarding-house
near the lamp-post.

She made it her business to visit certain houses to find out whether young girls were admitted to them, and if they were, Miss Rose Netley was inquisitive enough to want to know the use they were put to. She was quite without fear, and had been born with, or perhaps she had invented it for herself, an affection for girls. She went so far, quite out of all truth and reason, to call them all her sisters, even the fallen ones.

She was a perfectly normal young person, and nursed, girl-like at the bottom of her heart, a desire to marry. Among her men friends the one she liked and trusted most of all was a very quiet, harmless, bulky, simple-minded bank clerk who loved warm slippers and chess, was forty years old, perhaps a little German to look at, and at the same time one of the most sure and sincere fellows in the world.

Rose Netley liked the simple element in this good man’s nature, but he, honest fellow, when he was with her, used to curse himself for being so big, and could never bring his simple mind to believe that Rose would take him for a husband. He was entirely on her side in the war that she so ruthlessly waged against the use that young maidens are put to in our rich towns. When she was up to anything dangerous he was allowed to follow behind, taking with him, hidden under his three-year-old overcoat, a heavy Indian club that he exercised with in the mornings. Once he had broken the bedroom door at his lodgings with a back-handed stroke, forgetting the long stretch of his arm. If it came to blows, Mr. Malden could deal them, for he had a fine
straightforward
swing in his arm, and a most determined, never-give-in look in his grey eyes.

While drinking tea in Mrs. Netley’s
drawing-room
, Rose had told him that she was going to tap a new district. She had heard a girl tell what would be called a droll story, about her ruin in a certain lodging-house near the lamp-post in Mill Street. As Rose poured out Mr. Malden’s fifth cup of tea she told him that she was going to visit that house in the disguise of a young girl out of work.

Mr. Malden had heard of that street, and he advised his young lady to tell her story to the police. But Miss Netley, smiling at his dear simple-minded ignorance, explained that the
police were just as likely to help her sisters as the Grand Turk, and it was her intention to find out what went on there for herself. Malden had seen her go off like this—at anything—before, and he was well aware that if there happened to be a sister in hell itself, Miss Rose would try to find a way in, if only to ask the girl if she were happy. So he had to content himself with permission to wait in hiding near the house. Rose had found out that the room the girl had been trapped in looked out into the main street, and if things in there were very nasty, she told him, she would simply break a window and he would be sure to hear that.

The next evening, according to orders, Malden waited near the chapel, with his Indian club stuffed under his coat, trying to hide his bigness as well as he could. He had not to wait long. Soon a remarkably little working girl trudged wearily by carrying a bundle, dragging one leg after the other, and looking about as though she were seeking some place to stay for the night. She stopped for a moment to ask the big Malden whether there was a boarding-house near ‘that was cheap,’ and Malden, as arranged, pointed out the one near the lamp-post.

He watched her go in, and then sauntered by smoking a cigarette, as any quiet young man might do after a hard day’s work, but keeping the front windows of the house in sight. After a time it began to rain, and he huddled in an
archway opposite and saw two sailors go in and one come out. The sailor who came out lit a pipe and spat into the road, and then he heard some one inside lock the door. He was just dreaming to himself about carpet slippers and a kiss, when smash! out came half a window from the upper front room.

Within a few seconds this crash was followed by another, caused by the Indian club falling upon just the place in the street door where Malden judged the lock to be. The door burst inwards, and in a moment the club was at work at another locked door, and once inside that room it did its work just as boldly. The
onslaught
of the big Malden was so overwhelming that in less than a minute, Rose Netley, trembling in every nerve, not with fear, but with fierce rage against men, was led into the street by her rescuer.

The doctor of one of His Majesty’s ships was relieved of his usual idleness for some days by having the heads of four sailors to mend, such good work had the Indian club done.

This little adventure of the social worker’s destroyed the trade of that house, and indeed, of the street, routing out certain ugly black spiders who blinked at the daylight and then vanished. Besides turning out the spiders, Rose Netley brought a new spirit into the life of the street. The girls began to hire bicycles and to ride out into the country, they were learning to be gay and to enjoy themselves. The landlord
of the lodging-house, by a lucky chance, was able to rent his property to the Salvation Army, who brought music into the street. And the sailors, who always join in whatever is going on, performed wonders with tambourine and cymbals. As Miss Netley said, ‘It is only blind drink and blind lust that works the havoc.’

There was one person who did not appreciate the change in Mill Street, and that person was Mrs. Fancy. She did not approve of the way the Salvation Army did their work, and worse than that was the fact that the social worker, who had got herself so nearly strangled at the house near the lamp-post, came again. She even, ‘paultry thing!’ went so far as to make friends with the girls in the family three doors away. And on Sunday mornings this social worker, ‘she was certainly no lady,’ would come down and take the two girls for a run in a hired motor car. ‘Where do these people get their money?’ thought Mrs. Fancy.

Besides these evil changes in the street there appeared a new kind of sailor; the other ones had followed the black spiders into new haunts. Mrs. Fancy could do nothing but look very
unpleasant
, and very well she did it, when she saw, as she often did, a former victim walking out to hear the band in the Winter Gardens beside a smart young gentleman with ‘H.M.S.
Trident
’ on his cap, who was to marry her at Easter. Mrs. Fancy piously prayed for her destruction.

Mrs. Fancy—good Christian woman—found life very dull when there was no sinning to watch, and no degradation and sickness and shame to enjoy. The only pleasure these sin-loving girls deserved, so she thought, was the short run they had before they made their last leap; that was their allowance of joy, then they could struggle and sink and drown at their leisure.

Mrs. Fancy’s chapel had rubbed sin in, as the preachers believed, for the glory of God,
contentedly
damning the sinner with the rage of a parent. For the moment they were confronted with the horrible possibility, ‘what would happen if no one sinned?’ The Salvation Army with its counter attraction of joy was fast taking away the members of the chapel congregation. They had begun to start an ‘Army Picture Palace,’ and were going to introduce to the people a surprising story showing the very exciting and dramatic pilgrimage of a poor, much-troubled man called Christian.

Mrs. Fancy and one of the preachers who was her friend talked the matter over together. This preacher’s usual occupation was to cheat old maiden ladies into believing that he was a good gardener. Mrs. Fancy said to him, looking upward with a white smile, that she had dreamed the night before last of Miss Netley carried through a red-hot sky by three large black devils, like the ones in the chapel picture of the Broad Way.

O
NE bit of luck was after all to come to Mrs. Fancy. It came in the morning, a week or two after Christmas. Mrs. Fancy happened to be peeping out from behind her curtains. She had not let her rooms for three weeks, not since a bold farmer had run away with his dairy-maid. And Mrs. Fancy had been praying, morning and evening, that God might send her a guest for her rooms.

She was just on the point of turning away from the window when she noticed a rather stout gentleman coming along the street. He wore a dark, sombre-looking overcoat and carried an umbrella and a bag. She thought there could be no doubt about it, that he had come from somewhere by train. ‘Was he looking for rooms? And such a gentleman!' Mrs. Fancy's mouth watered.

And then he was stopping at her door. Mrs. Fancy, full of smiles, opened the door, and he expressed his pleasure and even stroked her cat. The gentleman informed Mrs. Fancy that his name was Roude, and that he wished to hire the rooms for himself and Mrs. Roude for three days. Mrs. Roude was to come by an afternoon train—she was a young lady—‘we have not been married very long'—he coughed. A gardener whom the gentleman had met near the station had advised him to go to Mrs. Fancy.

Mrs. Fancy understood. She had heard about that kind of young lady before. And how good of the chapel preacher to send the gentleman to her! For some reason or other, after
explaining
about Mrs. Roude, the gentleman became rather flushed. Mrs. Fancy valued that colour at two shillings and sixpence a day extra, above her usual charges.

The gentleman went on to explain that Mrs. Roude had been staying with her mother for the day at a small town near by, and that he had come on first to try and find rooms for their little holiday. The gentleman said that he liked the peaceful look of the street—‘it was so quiet'—and he did not wish for very expensive lodgings, ‘The young person'—the gentleman coughed—‘Mrs. Roude will like tea as soon as she comes. I shall fetch her from the station in a cab.'

This was the moment that Mrs. Fancy chose to name her price. It had been rising by leaps and bounds during the conversation. Mrs. Fancy said that for the three days the price of her rooms would be one pound ten shillings—‘she never let for less than that for such a short time.'

The gentleman took out of his pocket a very proper and religious-looking purse and paid her the money. Mrs. Fancy felt that for that moment the Lord had forsaken her. Why had not He told her, only just a little whisper in her ear, and she would have said two pounds. The gentleman's
high colour, that Mrs, Fancy had so pleasantly noticed, was gone and had left him with a pale and even a bluish look.

Mrs. Fancy just stood in the passage a moment to see what he would do, and the gentleman, feeling that he ought to do something, carried his bag upstairs. After a little while he returned with an unopened paper in his hand. The wrapper he very carefully folded up and put in his pocket. That wrapper, had he thrown it into the fireplace, would have interested Mrs. Fancy. She had, however, the pleasure of seeing that the paper he read was the
Standard,
of the day before. The gentleman returned to his room again. Was it to read yesterday's paper that he had paid one pound ten shillings for her rooms?

Mrs. Fancy had to disturb him three or four times in ten minutes to see if the fire burned. The gentleman did not seem to get on very well with his paper. He turned it over and rattled it, she could hear that outside, and when she came in he was always looking at a different page. At last he was satisfied, he had found something. She could not help seeing, as she was trying to tie the curtain a little better, what it was. Mrs. Fancy smiled—a divorce case, with a clergyman as co-respondent.

The gentleman waited and read. The legal aspect of the sex question was really most
interesting
. He looked at Mrs. Fancy's clock. The hands pointed exactly to twelve. There was
something wrong about that, the clock must have stopped. He could not understand the clock remaining in such an idle condition. He thought that clocks were always sent to the watchmaker's if they stood still at twelve o'clock. To look at that clock was to have come down in the world. Thank goodness he had a watch, a gold one. He now looked at that, his watch anyhow was going. It was almost time to think about walking to the station to meet the train. But first he must see Mrs. Fancy—only a minute before she had come in, careful woman, to poke the fire.

He opened his door and waited. There was no sound. He called gently, ‘Mrs, Fancy!' A shuffle in the kitchen, was it the cat? ‘Mrs. Fancy!' rather louder this time. The figure of Mrs. Fancy appeared in the passage. Where had she been?

‘I wonder if you could get us some wine, Mrs. Fancy, some port wine? I think perhaps two bottles of port wine.' And Mrs. Fancy received into her hand ten shillings for wine. She thanked her God for His infinite mercy, and asked the gentleman whether he would like anything else. ‘Would they like muffins for tea?'

‘I think I had better give you a pound, and you can cater for us,' he said.

Mrs. Fancy's joys were falling thick upon her. She hugged herself when she thought how thin was the partition between her own bedroom and
the lodgers'. She was sure to be able to hear all that was said.

The gentleman put on his coat, looking round as was his custom at home for the clothes-brush. Seeing nothing of the kind, not even a proper hall table—there was no room for one in Mrs. Fancy's passage,—he, for want of anything better to do, looked again at his watch. His watch told him that the proper time had come, the right minute for him to go to the station. He began to shuffle about, timidly trying to find the door handle. Mrs. Fancy, who had stepped a little back so that she might the better watch events, came politely forward, opened the door, and let the gentleman into the road.

Beyond the Mill Street area there were shops. One or two of these were already lit up, foretelling that the sour gloom of the winter afternoon would soon change into brilliance. The gentleman moved along, walking rather on his heels. He seemed to be nervous. The high colour came in his face and went again, leaving him
unnaturally
pale.

Once, perceiving a dignified looking
clergyman
a few yards in front of him, coming towards him and walking slowly in the middle of the pavement, Mrs. Fancy's gentleman, seized no doubt with a sudden hatred for the cloth, dashed blindly into a shop, one of the shops to light up early. Arrived at the counter, he stood, not just then having anything to say. The shop, and
lucky it was too for the gentleman, happened to be a tobacconist's. So no very great harm was done when he—his mind felt so queerly green—inquired whether they sold any warm woollen gloves.

Luckily, the cigar dealer with the gold
watch-chain
had once or twice before seen his customers on winter afternoons behave a little queerly. He had even once gone so far as to invite a gentleman, a retired banker, to snugly sleep under the counter, wrapped in a fifty-guinea fur coat, and with a great cigar sticking, like the funnel of a collier, out of the corner of his mouth, a cigar for which the customer had put down a pound note, but had forgotten, on waking up, to receive the change.

In answer to Mrs. Fancy's gentleman's inquiry for gloves, the worthy trader replied that he had some special new brier pipes of a wonderful grain—‘Lord South had only the day before bought three of them.' The dealer very much advised the gentleman to take one for two pounds; as he had only three left, and he went on further to explain that the particular kind of brier root out of which the pipes were made, had, alas, for the smokers, become, owing to the ravages of a certain little grub, as extinct as Adam. The gentleman paid for the pipe, thrust it into his pocket, and left the shop.

The train from Maidenbridge was due at 5.30. At the station human creatures in felt
hats and furs were walking up and down the platform looking at one another, not very lovingly. One little old lady was sitting alone upon a seat. She wore a bonnet, and sat there a very gentle and kindly clergyman's widow. But to the amazement and terror of every one, she was talking to herself, quite loud, about a nephew who was wounded in the Great War. He had since, so she said, been exported to Egypt to ship dates to England.

When any one passed this widow lady, they very hastily looked in another direction, for fear that the rest of the waiting passengers might imagine that she was speaking to them. Not regarding whatever they chose to think or do, the old lady went on telling her dear nephew's story, quietly, pleasantly, seriously, sitting quite still, with her gloved hands in her lap and her rather small and delicately shaped head a little bent forward. Her voice was soft but extremely penetrating.

She was to all appearances the most harmless, friendly, and gentle of clergymen's widows, yet here she was, making a whole platform load of people uneasy, so uneasy that no one would go within four yards of her. Every one passed, curving, when they came opposite to her seat, outwards towards the line; while she talked quietly and quite reasonably—to no one.

Just as the lady was explaining how the poor dear boy had been left wounded at the bottom
of the trench for nearly three days, the train came in. Taking up a little bag with a black tassel, she quietly entered a third-class
compartment
. Choosing a seat and putting her bag by her side, she went on with the adventures of her nephew in just the same tone, going through it all for the fifth time, addressing herself to a rather good picture of Old Sarum just above a lady's head in front of her, making the journey a perfect nightmare to the other passengers in the carriage, who did not know which way to look—the nephew was everywhere.

A fair number of people had scrambled from the train, with the usual noise and hurry and bustle, amongst them being, and rather showing herself off, a young girl with fair hair. She jumped out, chaffing merrily with two soldiers. She was talking very loudly and excitedly, but no one took the slightest notice, because she addressed her remarks, far madder than the widow's had been, to the two soldiers and not to thin air. She was telling the soldiers, not at all privately, ‘to stop their nonsense,' because her uncle, ‘such an old dear!' was waiting for her on the platform.

It was then, the crowd having cleared a little, that the gentleman from Mrs. Fancy's saw the group, and was, most naturally, a little shocked. He had come to the station expecting to see a young lady alone. Why should we not say that he expected to see Mrs. Roude stepping out demurely in the same dainty way that one or
two other ladies of his acquaintance would do, stepping neatly, with only just the smallest show of ankle? He did not quite understand what the soldiers were there for. They had, he could see that much, been travelling in the same coach with the young lady. The gentleman had seen soldiers before in his life—he had seen them in church,—but he was not quite sure what he ought to say, or ought not to say, to these two, one of whom had, at that moment, caught Mrs. Roude by the hand. It was at this juncture that the gentleman decided to practise the Christian virtue of patience—it was certainly the only virtue he could practise just then. So he waited, as an onlooker, to note what would happen next.

The girl had seen him standing, with his square-toed boots growing, as they looked to her, into the platform. Freeing her hand, she broke gaily away from the soldiers and fled—it looked like that—into the protecting arms of the
gentleman
whom she called her uncle. This
performance
of hers was not exactly, according to his idea, the way it had been planned, and from somewhere inside the gentleman uprose the
unpleasant
fear that Mrs. Fancy might be creeping about behind, and he entreated his companion to remember that she was Mrs. Roude. Her reply, ‘All right, old dear!' though gaily and girlishly spoken, was not exactly reassuring.

Once safe in the cab, she became more docile
and only laughed a little to herself, the effect of the soldiers' conversation in the railway carriage having passed off. At Mrs. Fancy's, things did not go quite so well. There was something in that good lady's behaviour that evidently amused Mrs. Roude. When Mrs. Fancy came in to clear away the tea, she beheld Mrs. Roude openly laughing at her; the rude young person! Her laughter was trial enough, but after the laughter came Mrs. Roude's speech: ‘Right-o, mother! I'll look after me old man; don't worry, mother.' And the young lady laughed again.

Mrs. Fancy possessed a sofa, and upon it she kept her best sofa cushion. When Mrs. Roude laughed at her, Mrs. Fancy looked at her sofa, and she was comforted. Her sofa was not
intended
for general wear, because one of its legs had become, after many years, a little loose just where it was fastened into the body.

Mrs. Fancy always made a point of telling her lodgers that one lady, a gentle, peaceful, quiet lady, a lady who never rudely kicked, could, if she felt tired, lie upon the front-room sofa quite safely; but that two ladies, or a lady and a gentleman, if they both sat upon it, even keeping as still as mice, the wounded leg would be sure to come off. All this Mrs. Fancy explained to her new lodgers, just as she always did, after tea. And the gentleman promised very kindly to obey her; but the lady, who used any tone rather than a refined one, laughed out at
Mrs. Fancy, ‘Furniture all right upstairs, mother?'

Mrs. Fancy left the room. She had never before, not even by her late husband, been spoken to like that.