XIII
DAMAGES FOR LIBEL
“A rare rush whilst it lasts,” mentioned Mrs. Crowther, assisting in the task of clearing tables. “My dear husband used to reckon up how much we should be making profit in a year if, instead of being from twelve to two, it went on from what he called early morn to dewy eve.” She sighed. “Mr. Crowther had a lot of poetry in his disposition—much more so than most eating-house keepers in Millwall.”
“Did he make bits up out of his own 'ead?” asked the girl deferentially.
“Ethel,” said the proprietress, nursing a column of plates and speaking with resolution, “you're new to the place, and you're not full acquainted with the rules. Understand, once for all, please, that I don't allow a word to be said against my late husband—nor whispered.”
“Here's a stray customer coming in, ma'am,” remarked the assistant. “Give me that armful, and you see to him.”
A stout man, after examining the day's announcement outside, entered and sat down with the relieved air common to those who have walked a great distance and to those who find in any form of exercise a source of trouble; he took off his hat, hung up his overcoat, and said, with relish, “Here comes the busy part of my day!”
Mrs. Crowther rested one palm on the table and gazed at the reversed notice on the window: “The Best of Everything and Everything of the Best,” giving him the space to make up his mind.
“You've got a nice little show here.”
“Not bad, sir,” she replied briefly. “What can I get for you?”
“Been all done up recently, too, if I mistake not. If it hadn't been that I remembered it was exactly opposite the entrance to the works I shouldn't have recognised it. Spent some of the 'appiest hours of my life, I did, over the way.”
“The steak and kidney pudding is off,” she said, glancing over his shoulder. She took the bill of fare from his hand and deleted the entry, returning the pencil to its position in the fastening of her blouse. Frowning at the impetuosity exhibited, he gave an order. She left, and returned with the liver and bacon and a basket containing squares of household bread.
“Any idea where my old friend Crowther is at the present moment?” he asked jovially. “Him and me were great chums in the old days that are past and done with.”
“He's gone.”
“Where to?”
She pointed upward reverently.
“That isn't exactly the place where I should have thought of looking for him.”
“What do you mean by that?” she demanded sharply.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, beginning to eat. “Only very few of us in this world, ma'am, if you don't mind putting yourself out of the question, can be looked upon as perfect. My name's Hards,” he went on, his mouth full. “Hards, with an aitch. Daresay you've heard him mention me. I'm speaking now of—what shall I say?—four, or it might be the early part of five. We were what they call inseparable, him and me, at that period.”
“Crowther gave up all his former companions when I married him.”
“He used to complain that you ruled him with a rod of iron.”
“I only wish,” she declared vehemently, “that the dear man was here to contradict you.”
“Crowther was the sort of chap,” said the other, with deliberation, “who'd contradict anything. Never better pleased than when he was arguing that black was white. I've known Crowther say one thing to a girl one minute, and another the”
The customer found his plate snatched away, the remainder of his chunk of bread swept to the floor.
“Go off out of my dining-rooms,” she ordered. “Don't you stay here another minute, or else I may use language that I shall be sorry for afterwards, and that you'll be sorry for afterwards. There's your hat, hanging up just behind you. Now move, sharp!”
The sleeves of his overcoat, owing to some defect in the lining, were difficult to manage, and this gave him time to protest. He had come, he declared, with no other intention than that of giving patronage to an establishment which he remembered, with affection, in the time of Crowther's mother, and to enjoy a talk over the past; if, in the course of conversation, he had over-stepped the mark, no one regretted it more acutely than himself. A plain man, accustomed to speaking his mind, he often found that he gave offence where none was intended.
“Jack Blunt they used to call me over at the works,” he added penitently. “Owing to me having the awk'ard trick of always telling the truth!”
Mrs. Crowther so far relented as to call the new girl; she instructed her to attend to the customer the while she herself retired to the back to wash up dishes. Mr. Hards said in a whisper to the attendant: “Don't seem to have quite pulled it off, first go!” and Ethel, also in an undertone, replied: “Mustn't get discouraged, uncle. Mother always says it's your one fault. Unsettle her mind about him, that's what you've got to do.”
He read a newspaper after the meal, and sent to the proprietress a deferential inquiry, asking whether he might be allowed to smoke, and presently hit upon a device for securing another interview.
“Your memory seems not quite what it ought to be,” said Mrs. Crowther, following him to the doorway. “If I were you I'd see a chemist about it.”
“I should have recollected that I hadn't settled up,” he declared, “just about as I was coming up from the subway at Greenwich.” He found coins. “No,” gazing at a shilling reverently, “mustn't let you have that one with the hole through it. I was told it would bring me luck. Crowther was wrong for once, but he meant well.”
“Did that really once belong to my dear husband?” she asked, with eagerness. “Oh, do let me look. I'd give almost anything to be allowed to keep it.”
“Kindly accept it, ma'am, as a present from me, and as a kind of apology for the blunder I made just now.”
“I treasure everything he left behind,” said Mrs. Crowther tearfully, “since he went, last December, and I don't know in the least how to thank you. Drop in any day you're passing by, and let's have another quiet chat; I'm never 'appier than when I'm talking about him.”
“My time's practically my own,” answered Mr. Hards. “Since I retired from over opposite, owing to a slight disagreement years ago, I've done a bit of work, book-canvassing, but that don't take up the entire day. So long!”
A few of the men came into the restaurant, after leaving the works; these were folk who had no expectations of finding tea or supper waiting at home, and they would have stayed on in comfort, gazing admiringly at the young proprietress, only that Mrs. Crowther offered a broad hint by instructing Ethel to find the shutters. They were drifting off, reluctantly, and one was saying to the rest that he would certainly make a dash for it (implying by this that he would make a proposal of marriage) if the lady were not so obviously devoted to a memory, when Mr. Hards appeared at the doorway, heated and exhausted by the effort to arrive before closing-time. With him a shy-looking companion, who had to be taken by the arm because he exhibited inclination to refrain, at the last moment, from entering. “Be a sport,” urged Mr. Hards. The other intimated by his manner that the task was, for him, considerable.
“Looking younger than ever,” declared Mr. Hards effusively. “How are you, ma'am, by this time? Still keeping well? Allow me to introduce you to my friend Ashton.”
“Very pleased,” said Mrs. Crowther with a nod. “What will you gentlemen take—tea or coffee?”
“Don't suppose,” he remarked still in complimentary tones, “that we shall be able to tell any difference. Ashton, you decide.”
Ashton, looking around, inquired whether the place did not possess a licence; Mrs. Crowther gave the answer, and he said that perhaps coffee would do him as little harm as anything.
“Happened to run across him,” explained Mr. Hards, “and mentioned that I'd met you by chance, ma'am, and he says 'Not the widow of silly old Millwall Crowther?' he says. Just like that. Didn't you, Ashton?”
Mrs. Crowther turned abruptly, and went to furnish the order. “Mind you say 'yes' to everything,” ordered Hards privately and strenuously, “or else I'll make it hot for you.”
The two greeted Mrs. Crowther with frank and open countenances.
“The late lamented,” went on Mr. Hards, with a confidential air, “as you may or may not be aware, used to be in the 'abit of paying attentions to my friend Ashton's sister.”
“I know all about that,” she remarked curtly. “It was before he met me.”
“And, realising how anxious you was to get hold of everything that once belonged to him, I persuaded him to hop off home and have a search. And lo and behold,” producing a small paper parcel from the inside pocket of his overcoat, “he found this.” Mr. Hards untied the string with deliberation. “There you are!” triumphantly. “Pearls from the Poets. And inside, his handwriting.”
“Not sure that I want anything that he gave away to another lady at a time when him and me were not acquainted.”
“The date'll settle that,” said Hards. “Ashton, your eyes are younger than mine; what do you make of it?”
Ashton recited the entry with an emphasis on the date; Mrs. Crowther grabbed at the book, glanced at the writing, and sat down on the nearest chair, gazing steadily at a ginger-ale advertisement.
“Don't tell me,” begged Hards distressedly, “that I've put my foot into it again. 'Pon my word, if I ain't the most unlucky chap alive. If I'd had the leastest idea that I was going to be the means of disclosing to you the circumstance that Crowther gave away presents of this kind, and with this sort of remark, after he was married to you, why, I'd sooner”
She started up with the book, and, selecting the fly-page, placed this between her eyes and the gas-light.
“Some one's been altering the date,” she said quietly. She threw the volume across. “You gentlemen have got just two minutes and a half before we close for the night. And, as the business is doing pretty well, perhaps you don't mind if I suggest you never show your faces inside here again.” She went.
“Any objection to me offering you a word of advice, old man?” asked Ashton, on the pavement. “You're on the wrong tack. When a woman's made up her mind, the best plan is to agree with her. What you ought to do”
“Keep quiet,” ordered the other exasperatedly. “Can't you see I'm thinking?”
They crossed, and walked beside the blank wall of the works.
Ashton was again invited, in plain language, to preserve silence by putting his head in a bag. The lights went out in the restaurant opposite; on the first floor a match was struck and applied to the gas globes; the music of a pianoforte was heard.
“It's a shame,” declared Hards, throwing out his arms emphatically, “a right-down shame for a nice-looking young woman of her sort to be left alone and neglected. Here she is, able to cook, able to play, very good to look at, and she's no business to be left by herself.”
“Evidently she don't want to be left with you.”
“You hop off home,” ordered Hards, “soon as ever you like, and take that book with you, and don't you ever attempt to interfere again with matters you've got no concern in. Otherwise”
His friend hurried away without taking the opportunity to hear the alternative.
Mr. Hards waited until his niece came out with a letter for the post. A whistle brought her to him from the pillar-box.
“Who was it addressed to?” he demanded. The girl replied that she had omitted to look.
“'Pon my word,” he cried, “I seem to be surrounded by lunatics. Nobody's got a particle of sense, so far as I can ascertain, excepting myself. No wonder I can't manage matters as I should like. But, putting all that on one side, what I want now is another interview with her.”
“Judging by what she said after you left, you're not likely to get it.”
“Look here, my girl. It was your own mother's suggestion at the start, and she won't be best pleased if you make yourself a stumbling-block. She, for some reason, seems to have got tired of me living in her house at Greenwich, and it was her idea I should marry well, and settle down somewhere else. Apart from which, I've arrived at a time of life when I need a woman's care and good feeding, and enough money in my pocket to stand treat to friends after they've stood treat to me.” He spoke distinctly. “I'm going to knock at that door over there presently, and you've got to let me in, and you can stand by and listen whilst I say a few words, and put it all on a proper footing.”
“But she hates the very sight of you.”
“The sort of sensation,” he declared, “that can soon be turned to love.”
Mr. Hards thought it wiser, on finding himself outside the door of the restaurant, to give a sharp double knock. He smiled contentedly on hearing young Mrs. Crowther's voice call out: “It's all right, Ethel. Only the postman. I'll answer him!” She opened the door, and faced him with a look of expectancy that at once vanished.
“Excuse me, ma'am,” he said, taking off his hat, “but I've been speaking my mind to that young fellow, and he asked me to call back and apologise on his behalf. I never noticed what he'd been up to, altering that date; it wanted a lady's sharpness and a lady's intelligence to detect that. What he wants me to say is he acted on the impulse of the moment.”
“He'd better give up acting altogether,” she remarked. “Did you really know my husband well, or was it all gas?”
“Didn't I never tell you about that affair poor Crowther and me had with a bobby down near the London Docks one night in November? A fine chap,” went on Hards reminiscently, “if ever there was one. The way he could put up his dooks whenever there was trouble about! I seldom met a fellow who was his equal. He was what I call a manly man. When they told me he'd gone and left you a widow I cried like a child, I did.”
“I was upset at the time,” remarked Mrs. Crowther, “but it soon wore off.”
“It's often struck me,” he went on, surprised, “that perhaps you didn't appreciate him at his true value whilst he was alive. Very likely you don't know, as I know, the way he used to talk about you behind your back.”
“If it was anything like the way he talked in front of my face, I'd rather not hear.”
“Anyway, I daresay, ma'am, you often find yourself looking about for his successor?”
“To tell you the truth, I do.”
He tried to take her hand, but failed.
“I can see him now,” he remarked sentimentally. “We was walking together in Stratford Broadway, and suddenly he turned to me and he says, 'Ernest,' he says, 'something seems to tell me I'm not long for this world. I want you to make me a promise,' he says. 'If anything amiss happens to me, I look to you to be a friend to the wife. And if so be,' he says, with a sort of a kind of a break in his voice, 'if so be as you should take a fancy to her, and she should take a fancy to you, nothing would give me more pleasure looking down on you both,' he says, 'than to'”
“Bequeathed me to you, did he?”
“It amounts to that, ma'am.”
“All this is news to me,” she remarked. “About what date was it?”
“About what date?” echoed Hards, rubbing his chin. “I can give it you within a very little. It was the night before I met William Humphries, and him and me had a few friendly words about football, and I was in the horspital for three weeks. That was the early part of December. I think it was December you said that poor Crowther drew his last breath. Must have been only a few days—three at the utmost—that he had his talk with me.”
“That seems strange.”
“Strange things do occur in this world.”
“Because Crowther was laid up in his last illness for four months inside this house, and never went outside until the undertaker's man carried him. And a pretty tidy nuisance he was, too, then, and, in fact, all the time I was married to him. Is that a constable coming along, or a postman?”
Hards, having ascertained that the approaching man did not represent the law, remained, searching his mind busily. The postman stopped, gave Mrs. Crowther a letter with a foreign postmark, and remarked that the evening was fine.
“His ship will be home here within a fortnight,” she cried excitedly, glancing at the first words of the communication. “Two weeks from to-day.”
“Who?”
“Nobody you know,” said Mrs. Crowther. “And then we shall be married, and I shan't have to keep the men at the works off by pretending to be so fond of my first. It's taken a bit of doing. Let me think, now. You want to see Ethel, I expect, don't you?”
“I don't want to see no one,” he declared with an emphatic gesture, “no one on this side of the river ever again, so long as I jolly well live!”