The man who found himself (Smith's Magazine 1920)/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
Mudd, with the ten-pound note and the written address, had started that morning with the intention of doing another errand as well. He first took a cab to King Charles Street. It was a relief to find it there and that the house had not been burned down in the night. Fire was one of Mudd's haunting dreads—fire and the fear of a mistress. He had extinguishing bombs hung in every passage, besides red, cone-shaped extinguishers. If he could have had bombs to put out the flames of love and keep women away, he no doubt would have had them.
Mrs. Jukes received him and he inquired if the plate had been locked up. He visited his own room and examined his bank book to see if it were safe and untampered with. Then he had a glass of ginger wine for his stomach's sake.
“Where are you off to now?” asked Mrs. Jukes.
“On business for the master,” replied Mudd. “I've some law papers to take to an address. Lord! Look at those brasses! Haven't the girls no hands? Place going to wrack and ruin if I leave it two instant minutes—and look at that fender. Sure you put the chain on the hall door last night?”
“Sure.”
“Well, be sure you do it, for there's another Jack the Ripper chap goin' about the West End, I've heard, and he may be in on you if you don't.”
Having frightened Mrs. Jukes into the sense of the necessity for chains as well as bolts, Mudd put on his hat, blew his nose, and departed, banging the door behind him and making sure it was shut.
There is a flower shop in the street at the end of King Charles Street. He entered, bought his bouquet, and with it in his hand left the establishment. He was looking for a cab to hide himself in. He found none, but he met a fellow butler, Judge Ponsonby's man.
“Hello, Mr. Mudd,” said the other. “Going courting?'
“Mrs. Jukes asked me to take them to a female friend that's goin' to be married,” said Mudd.
The bouquet was not extraordinarily large, but it seemed to grow larger. Condemned to take an omnibus in lieu of a cab, it seemed to fill the omnibus. People look at it and then at Mudd. It seemed to him that he was condemned to carry Simon's folly bare in the face of the world. Then he remembered what he had said about the recipient going to be married. Was that an omen?
Mudd believed in omens. If his elbow itched, and it had itched yesterday, he was going to sleep in a strange bed. He never killed spiders, and he tested “strangers” in the teacup to see if they were male or female.
The omen was riding him now and he got out of the omnibus and sought the street of his destination, feeling almost as if he were a fantastic bridesmaid at some nightmare wedding, with Simon in the rôle of groom.
That Simon should select a wife in this gloomy street off Leicester Square and in this drab-looking house at whose door he was knocking, did not occur to Mudd. What did occur to him was that some hussy living in this house had put her spell on Simon and might select him for a husband, marry him at a registry office before his temporary youth had departed, and come and reign at King Charles Street.
Mudd's dreaded imaginary mistress had always figured in his mind's eyes as a stout lady—eminently a lady—who would interfere with his ideas of how the brasses ought to be polished, interfere with tradesmen, order Mudd about, and make herself generally a nuisance; this new imaginary horror was a “painted slut,” who would bring ridicule and disgrace on Simon and all belonging to him.
Mudd had the fine feelings of an old maid on matters like this, backed by a fine knowledge of what elderly men are capable of in the way of folly with women. Did not Mr. Justice Thurlow marry his cook?
He rang at the dingy hall door and it was opened by a dingy little girl in a print dress.
“Does Miss 'Rosinol' live here?” asked Mudd.
“Yus.”
“Can I see her?”
“Wait a minit,” said the dingy~one. She clattered up the stairs. She wore hobnail boots to judge by the noise. A minute elapsed and then she clattered down again.
“Come in, plaze,” said the little girl.
Mudd obeyed and followed upstairs, holding on to the shaky banister with his left hand, carrying the bouquet in his right, feeling as though he were a vicious man walking upstairs in a dream, feeling no longer like Mudd.
The little girl opened a door and there was the “painted hussy,” old Madame Rossignol, sitting at a table, with books spread open before her, and writing.
She translated—as before said—English books into French, novels mostly.
The bouquet of last night had been divided; there were flowers about the room, and about the room, despite its shabbiness, there was an atmosphere of cleanliness and high decency that soothed the stricken soul of Mudd.
“I'm Mr. Pettigrew's man,” said Mudd “and he asked me to bring you these flowers.”
“Ah, Monsieur Seemon Pattigrew!” cried the old lady, her face lighting. “Come in, monsieur. Cerise, Cerise! A gentlemon from Mr. Pattigrew! Will you not take a seat, monsieur?”
Mudd, handing over the flowers, sat down, and at that moment in came Cerise from the bedroom adjoining, fresh and dainty, with wide blue eyes that took in Mudd and the flowers, that seemed to take in at the same time the whole of spring and summer.
“Poor, but decent,” said Mudd to himself.
“Monsieur,” said the old lady, as Cerise ran off to get a bowl to put the flowers in, “you are as welcome to us as your good kind master who saved my daughter yesterday. Will you convey to him our deepest respects and our thanks?”
“Saved her?” said Mudd.
The bouquet was not extraordinarily large, but it seemed to grow larger and to fill the omnibus.
Madame explained. Cerise, arranging the flowers, joined in. They waxed enthusiastic. Never had Mudd been so chattered to before. He saw the whole business and guessed how the land lay now. He felt deeply relieved. Madame inspired him with instinctive confidence; Cerise in her youth and innocence repelled any idea of marriage between herself and Simon; but they'd got to be warned, somehow, that Simon was off the spot. He began the warning, seated there before the women and rubbing his knees gently, his eyes wandering about as if seeking inspiration from the furniture.
Mr. Pettigrew was a very good master, but he had to be taken care of, for his health wasn't what it might be. He was older than he looked, but lately he had had an illness that had made him suddenly grow young again as you might say. The doctors could not make it out, but he was just like a child sometimes, as you might say.
“I said it,” cut in madame. “A boy—that is his charm.”
Well, Mudd did not know anything about charms, but he was often very anxious about Mr. Pettigrew. Then, little by little, the confidence the women inspired opened his floodgates and his suppressed emotions came out.
London was not good for Mr. Pettigrew's health, that was the truth. He ought to be got away quiet and out of excitement—door knockers rose up before him as he said this—but he was very self-willed. It was strange, a gentleman getting young again like this, and a great perplexity and trouble to an old man like him, Mudd.
“Ah, monsieur, he has been always young,” said madame. “That heart could never grow old!”
Mudd shook his head.
“I've known him for forty years,” said he, “and it has hit me cruel hard, his doing things he's never done before—not much—but there you are—he's different.”
“I have known an old gentleman,” said madame, “Monsieur de Mirabole. He, too, changed to be quite gay and young as if spring had come to him. He wrote me verses,” laughed madame. “Me, an old woman. I humored him, did I not, Cerise? But I never read his verses. I could not humor him to that point.”
“What happened to him?” asked Mudd gloomily.
“Oh, dear, he fell in love with Cerise,” said madame. “He was very rich. He wanted to marry Cerise, did he not, Cerise?”
“Oui, maman,” replied Cerise, finishing the flowers.
All this hit Mudd pleasantly. Sincere as sunshine, patently, obviously truthful, this pair of females were beyond suspicion on the charge of setting nets for Simon; also, and for the first time in his life, he came to know the comfort of a female mind when in trouble. His troubles up to this had been mostly about uncleaned brasses, corked wine, letters forgotten to be posted. In this whirlpool of amazement, like Poe's man in the descent of the maelstrom, who, clinging to a barrel, found that he was being sucked down slower, Mudd, clinging now to the female saving—something sense, clarity of outlook, goodness—call it what you will—found comfort.
He had opened his mind. The nightmare had lifted somewhat. Opening his mind to Bobby had not relieved him in the least. On the contrary, talking with Bobby, the situation had seemed more insane than ever. The two rigid, masculine minds had followed one another, incapable of mutual help; the buoyant female, something incapable of strict definition, was now to Mudd as the supporting barrel. He clutched at the idea of old Monsieur de Mirabole, who had got young again without coming to much mischief. He felt that Simon, on falling upon these two females, had fallen among pillows. He told them of Simon's message, that he would call upon them later in the day, and they laughed.
“He will be safe with us,” said madame. “We will not let him come to 'arm. Do not be alarmed, Monsieur Mod, the bon dieu will surely protect an innocent so charming, so good. So much goodness may walk alone, even among tigers, even among lions, and it will come to no 'arm. We will see that he returns to the Sharing Cross 'Otel. I will talk to 'im.”
Mudd departed, relieved, so great is the power of goodness, even though it shines in the persons of an impoverished old French lady and a girl whose innocence is her only strength.
But his relief was not to be of long duration, for on entering the hotel, as before said, he met Bobby.
“He's gone,” said Bobby. “Given me the slip. And he has two hundred-pound bank notes with him, to say nothing of the rest.”
“Oh, Lord!” said Mudd.
“Can he have gone to see that girl—what's her address?”
“What girl?” asked Mudd.
“The girl you took the flowers to.”
“I've just been,” said Mudd. “No, he wasn't there. Wish he was, it's an old lady.”
“Old lady!'
“And her daugher. They're French folk, poor, but honest. Not a scrap of harm in them.” He explained the Rossignol affair.
“Well, there's nothing to be done but sit down and wait,” said Bobby.
“It's easy to say that. Me, with my nerves near gone!”
“I know, mine are nearly as bad. 'Pon my soul, it's just as if one had lost a child. Mudd, we've got to get him out of London. We've got to do it!”
“Get him back first,” said Mudd. “Get him back alive with all that money in his pocket. He'll be murdered before night, that's my opinion—I know London—or jailed—and he'll give his right name.”
“We'll tip the reporters if he is,” said Bobby, “and keep it out of the papers. I was run in once and I know the ropes. Cheer up, Mudd, and go and have a whisky and soda. You want bucking up and so do I.”
“Bucking up!” said Mudd.