Paul Kelver. Jerome Klapka Jerome

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ to my mother, sufficiently central for office purposes, close as it was to Lincoln and Grey’s Inn and Bedford Row, pavements long worn with the weary footsteps of the Law’s sad courtiers.

      “Poplar,” said my father, “has disappointed me. It seemed a good idea – a rapidly rising district, singularly destitute of solicitors. It ought to have turned out well, and yet somehow it hasn’t.”

      “There have been a few come,” my mother reminded him.

      “Of a sort,” admitted my father; “a criminal lawyer might gather something of a practice here, I have no doubt. But for general work, of course, you must be in a central position. Now, in Guilford Street people will come to me.”

      “It should certainly be a pleasanter neighbourhood to live in,” agreed my mother.

      “Later on,” said my father, “in case I want the whole house for offices, we could live ourselves in Regent’s Park. It is quite near to the Park.”

      “Of course you have consulted Mr. Hasluck?” asked my mother, who of the two was by far the more practical.

      “For Hasluck,” replied my father, “it will be much more convenient. He grumbles every time at the distance.”

      “I have never been quite able to understand,” said my mother, “why Mr. Hasluck should have come so far out of his way. There must surely be plenty of solicitors in the City.”

      “He had heard of me,” explained my father. “A curious old fellow – likes his own way of doing things. It’s not everyone who would care for him as a client. But I seem able to manage him.”

      Often we would go together, my father and I, to Guilford Street. It was a large corner house that had taken his fancy, half creeper covered, with a balcony, and pleasantly situated, overlooking the gardens of the Foundling Hospital. The wizened old caretaker knew us well, and having opened the door, would leave us to wander through the empty, echoing rooms at our own will. We furnished them handsomely in later Queen Anne style, of which my father was a connoisseur, sparing no necessary expense; for, as my father observed, good furniture is always worth its price, while to buy cheap is pure waste of money.

      “This,” said my father, on the second floor, stepping from the bedroom into the smaller room adjoining, “I shall make your mother’s boudoir. We will have the walls in lavender and maple green – she is fond of soft tones – and the window looks out upon the gardens. There we will put her writing-table.”

      My own bedroom was on the third floor, a sunny little room.

      “You will be quiet here,” said my father, “and we can shut out the bed and the washstand with a screen.”

      Later, I came to occupy it; though its rent – eight and sixpence a week, including attendance – was somewhat more than at the time I ought to have afforded. Nevertheless, I adventured it, taking the opportunity of being an inmate of the house to refurnish it, unknown to my stout landlady, in later Queen Anne style, putting a neat brass plate with my father’s name upon the door. “Luke Kelver, Solicitor. Office hours, 10 till 4.” A medical student thought he occupied my mother’s boudoir. He was a dull dog, full of tiresome talk. But I made acquaintanceship with him; and often of an evening would smoke my pipe there in silence while pretending to be listening to his monotonous brag.

      The poor thing! he had no idea that he was only a foolish ghost; that his walls, seemingly covered with coarse-coloured prints of wooden-looking horses, simpering ballet girls and petrified prize-fighters, were in reality a delicate tone of lavender and maple green; that at her writing-table in the sunlit window sat my mother, her soft curls curtaining her quiet face.

       CHAPTER VI.

      OF THE SHADOW THAT CAME BETWEEN THE MAN IN GREY AND THE LADY OF THE LOVE-LIT EYES

      “There’s nothing missing,” said my mother, “so far as I can find out. Depend upon it, that’s the explanation: she has got frightened and has run away.

      “But what was there to frighten her?” said my father, pausing with a decanter in one hand and the bottle in the other.

      “It was the idea of the thing,” replied my mother. “She has never been used to waiting at table. She was actually crying about it only last night.”

      “But what’s to be done?” said my father. “They will be here in less than an hour.”

      “There will be no dinner for them,” said my mother, “unless I put on an apron and bring it up myself.”

      “Where does she live?” asked my father.

      “At Ilford,” answered my mother.

      “We must make a joke of it,” said my father.

      My mother, sitting down, began to cry. It had been a trying week for my mother. A party to dinner – to a real dinner, beginning with anchovies and ending with ices from the confectioner’s; if only they would remain ices and not, giving way to unaccustomed influences, present themselves as cold custard – was an extraordinary departure from the even tenor of our narrow domestic way; indeed, I recollect none previous. First there had been the house to clean and rearrange almost from top to bottom; endless small purchases to be made of articles that Need never misses, but which Ostentation, if ever you let her sneering nose inside the door, at once demands. Then the kitchen range – it goes without saying: one might imagine them all members of a stove union, controlled by some agitating old boiler out of work – had taken the opportunity to strike, refusing to bake another dish except under permanently improved conditions, necessitating weary days with plumbers. Fat cookery books, long neglected on their shelf, had been consulted, argued with and abused; experiments made, failures sighed over, successes noted; cost calculated anxiously; means and ways adjusted, hope finally achieved, shadowed by fear.

      And now with victory practically won, to have the reward thus dashed from her hand at the last moment! Downstairs in the kitchen would be the dinner, waiting for the guests; upstairs round the glittering table would be the assembled guests, waiting for their dinner. But between the two yawned an impassable gulf. The bridge, without a word of warning, had bolted – was probably by this time well on its way to Ilford. There was excuse for my mother’s tears.

      “Isn’t it possible to get somebody else?” asked my father.

      “Impossible, in the time,” said my mother. “I had been training her for the whole week. We had rehearsed it perfectly.”

      “Have it in the kitchen,” suggested my aunt, who was folding napkins to look like ships, which they didn’t in the least, “and call it a picnic.” Really it seemed the only practical solution.

      There came a light knock at the front door.

      “It can’t be anybody yet, surely,” exclaimed my father in alarm, making for his coat.

      “It’s Barbara, I expect,” explained my mother. “She promised to come round and help me dress. But now, of course, I shan’t want her.” My mother’s nature was pessimistic.

      But with the words Barbara ran into the room, for I had taken it upon myself to admit her, knowing that shadows slipped out through the window when Barbara came in at the door – in those days, I mean.

      She kissed them all three, though it seemed but one movement, she was so quick. And at once they saw the humour of the thing.

      “There’s СКАЧАТЬ