_ CHAPTER XLI. LABORIOUS DAYS
With Gerard's death, Henry began to find Aunt Tipping's too sad a place to go on living in. It had become haunted; and when new people moved into Gerard's rooms, it became still more painful for him. It was as though Gerard had been dispossessed and driven out. So he cast about for some new shelter; and, one day, chance having taken him to the shipping end of the city, he came upon some old offices which seemed full of anxiety to be let. Inquiring of a chatty little housekeeper's wife, he discovered, away at the echoing top of the building, a big, well-lighted room, for which she thought the owner would be glad to take ten pounds a year. That whole storey was deserted. Henry made up his mind at once, and broke the news to Aunt Tipping that evening. It was the withering of one of her few rays of poetry, and she struggled to keep him; but when she saw how it was, the good woman insisted that he should take something from her towards furnishing. Receiving was nothing like so blessed as giving for Aunt Tipping. That old desk,--yes, she had bought it for him,--that he must certainly take, and think of his old aunt sometimes as he wrote his great books on it; and some bed-linen she could well afford. She would take no denial.
Angel and Esther were then called in to help him in the purchase of a carpet, a folding-bed, an old sofa, and a few chairs. A carpenter got to work on the bookshelves, and in a fortnight's time still another habitation had been built for the Muse,--a habitation from which she was not destined to remove again, till she and Angel and Henry all moved into one house together,--a removal which was, as yet, too far off to be included in this history.
Ten pounds a year, a folding-bed, and a teapot!--this was Henry's new formula for the cultivation of literature. He had so far progressed in his ambitions as to have arrived at the dignity of a garret of his own, and he liked to pretend that soon he might be romantically fortunate enough to sit face to face with starvation. He knew, however, that it would be a starvation mitigated by supplies from three separate, well-lardered homes. A lad with a sweetheart and a sister, a mother and an aunt, all in love with him, is not likely to become an authority on starvation in its severest forms.
A stern law had been passed that Henry's daytime hours were to be as strictly respected as those of a man of business; yet quite often, about eleven o'clock in the morning, there would come a heavenly whisper along the passage and a little knock on the door, soft as a flower tapping against a window-pane.
"Thank goodness, that's Angel!
"Angel, bless you! How glad I am to see you! I can't get on a bit with my work this morning."
"Oh, but I haven't come to interrupt you, dear. I sha'n't keep you five minutes. Only I thought, dear, you'd be so tired of pressed beef and tinned tongue, and so I thought I'd make a little hot-pot for you. I bought the things for it as I came along, and it won't take five minutes, if Mrs. Glass [the housekeeper] will only lend me a basin to put it in, and bake it for you in her oven. Now, dear, you mustn't--you know I mustn't stay. See now, I'll just take off my hat and jacket and run along to Mrs. Glass, to get what I want. I'll be back in a minute. Well, then, just one--now that's enough; good-bye," and off she would skip.
If you want to know how fairies look when they are making hot-pot, you should have seen Angel's absorbed little shining face.
"Now, do be quiet, Henry. I'm busy. Why don't you get on with your work? I won't speak a word."
"Angel, dear, you might just as well stay and help me to eat it. I sha'n't do any work to-day, I know for certain. It's one of my bad days."
"Now, Henry, that's lazy. You mustn't give way like that. You'll make me wish I hadn't come. It's all my fault."
"No, really, dear, it isn't. I haven't done a stroke all morning--though I've sat with my pen for two hours. You might stay, Angel, just an hour or two."
"No, Henry; mother wants me back soon. She's house-cleaning. And besides, I mustn't. No--no--you see I've nearly finished now--see! Get me the salt and pepper. There now--that looks nice, doesn't it? Now aren't I a good little housewife?"
"You would be, if you'd only stay. Do stay, Angel. Really, darling, it will be all the same if you go. I know I shall do nothing. Look at my morning's work, and he brought her a sheet of paper containing two lines and a half of new-born prose, one line and a half of which was plentifully scratched out. To this argument he added two or three persuasive embraces.
"It's really true, Henry? Well, of course, I oughtn't; but if you can't work, of course you can't. And you must have a little rest sometimes, I know. Well, then, I'll stay; but only till we've finished lunch, you know, and we must have it early. I won't stay a minute past two o'clock, do you hear? And now I'll run along with this to Mrs. Glass."
When Angel had gone promptly at three, as likely as not another step would be heard coming down the passage, and a feminine rustle, suggesting a fuller foliage of skirts, pause outside the door, then a sort of brotherly-sisterly knock.
"Esther! Why, you've just missed Angel; what a pity!"
"Well, dear, I only ran up for half-a-minute. I was shopping in town, and I couldn't resist looking in to see how the poor boy was getting on. No, dear, I won't take my things off. I must catch the half-past three boat, and then I'll keep you from your work?"
Esther always said this with a sort of suggestion in her voice that it was just possible Henry might have found some new way of both keeping her there and doing his work at the same time; as though she had said, "I know you cannot possibly work while I am here; but, of course, if you can, and talking to me all the time won't interfere with it--well, I'll stay."
"Oh, no, you won't really. To tell the truth, I've done none to-day. I can't get into the mood."
"So you've been getting Angel to help you. Oh, well, of course, if Angel can be allowed to interrupt you, I suppose I can too. Well, then, I'll stay a quarter of an hour."
"But you may as well take your things off, and I'll make a cup of tea, eh? That'll be cosey, won't it? And then you can read me Mike's last letter, eh?"
"Oh, he's doing splendidly, dear! I had a lovely letter from him this morning. Would you really care to hear a bit of it?"
And Esther would proceed to read, picking her way among the endearments and the diminutives.
"I _am_ glad, dear. Why, if he goes on at this rate, you'll be able to get married in no time."
"Yes; isn't it splendid, dear? I am so happy! What I'd give to see his little face for five minutes! Wouldn't you?"
"Rather. Perhaps he'll be able to run up on Bank Holiday."
"I'm afraid not, dear. He speaks of it in his letter, and just hopes for it; but rather fears they'll have to play at Brighton, or some other stupid seaside place."
"That's a bother. Yes, dear old Mike! To think of him working away there all by himself--God bless him! Do you know he's never seen this old room? It struck me yesterday. It doesn't seem quite warmed till he's seen it. Wouldn't it be lovely to have him here some night?--one of our old, long evenings. Well, I suppose it will really come one of these days. And then we shall be having you married, and going off to London in clouds of glory, while poor old Henry grubs away down here in Tyre."
"Well, if we do go first, you will not be long after us, dear; and if only Mike could make a really great hit, why, in five years' time we might all be quite rich. Won't it be wonderful?"
Then the kettle boiled, and Henry made the tea; and when it had long since been drunk, Esther began to think it must be five o'clock, and, horrified to find it a quarter to six, confessed to being ashamed of herself, and tried to console her conscience by the haste of her good-bye.
"I'm afraid I've wasted your afternoon," she said; "but we don't often get a chat nowadays, do we? Good-bye, dear. Go on loving me, won't you?"
After that, Henry would give the day up as a bad job, and begin to wonder if Ned would be dropping in that evening for a smoke; and as that was Ned's almost nightly custom about eight o'clock, the chances of Henry's disappointment were not serious. _