Mr. Deane, the solicitor, could not understand it. He pulled his patriarchal whiskers and stroked his domed forehead, sorely puzzled by Agatha’s repeated demands that he should ascertain for her the conditions of entry on the Britannia, and the costs of a naval education and highfalutin’ absurdities. He ventured to point out that if Agatha persisted in her decision to send young Albert to the Navy she could count him lost to her from the age of twelve. Agatha fully realized it already, and set her jaw as she told him so. Agatha believed that self-sacrifice was the primary duty of mankind; that man (and much more so woman) was born to sorrow; and that she should give up her child seemed to her right and proper, especially if the Navy benefited. The British Navy was to her the noblest creation in the world; it was the outward and visible manifestation of the majesty of God. Mr. Deane sighed incredulously and impatiently; he had been brought up in a world where women never had any ideas of their own and never, never dreamed of acting contrary to masculine advice.
Perhaps it was this impatience of his which impelled him along the steep and slippery road on which his footsteps were even then straying. Perhaps he could not bear to see good money wasted on sending Albert Brown to the Britannia, and he embezzled it as the only method of prevention. Joking apart, Agatha’s insistence must really be taken into account in estimating the circumstances of the misdeeds of that venerable old hypocrite.
Temptation certainly came his way. A whole series of road improvements and tramway extensions and industrial developments in South-East London had led to the sale of a great deal of house property lately—Agatha’s included. Mr. Deane found himself in charge temporarily of a large amount of his clients’ capital. Mr. Deane—the awful truth appeared later—led two lives, one in the company of his good wife, and the other in the company of a damsel of a class which the newspapers sometimes designated as ‘fair Cyprians’. Mr. Deane’s expenses were naturally in excess of his income. Mr. Deane endeavoured to right such a state of affairs by tactful speculation. Mr. Deane selected the South African market as the field of his activities. Mr. Deane lost money, for South African securities slumped heavily before the threat of the South African War. Mr. Deane shrank from the thought of suicide, or of prison and poverty. Mr. Deane gathered together what remained of his clients’ negotiable assets and departed for Callao, accompanied by the fair Cyprian. The Official Receiver found much work to do in clearing up the ruin left by Mr. Deane.
Agatha’s money had nearly all vanished. The Official Receiver sorted out for her a tiny fraction of the original capital, but it was a woefully small amount. The fate which Will Brown had predicted for her money had descended upon it. It was that fact, that prophecy of Will’s, quite as much as anything else, which made Agatha set her lips and turn with energy into continuing her life’s work without reference to her family. She would not go back to them, nor crave their help. She would not have them say, ‘I told you so.’ The fine sewing which she had done lightheartedly before to earn luxuries now was called upon to supply necessities. Lucky it was that she had built up a connexion, and that not much further effort was needed to establish herself in the good graces of the local big drapers and gain herself a small but assured market. No Britannia for Albert now. If she had thought her father or her brothers would have supplied the money for that she would have gone back to them and eaten humble pie, eaten the bread of penitence and drunk the waters of affliction, but she was all too sure that they would not. Their idea of their duty towards her would include the necessity of boarding Albert out and getting rid of him, to the colonies or the mercantile marine, as rapidly, inconspicuously, and inexpensively as possible. They were heathens, infidels, upon whom the light of the Navy had not descended.
So fine sewing, embroidery, pleating and button-making continued to earn the daily bread of Agatha and Albert. One more set of plans had to be devised for Albert’s future. If he was to receive a commission in the usual way (perhaps it was as well that Mr. Deane had been involved with the fair Cyprian, for Albert might easily never have made his way past a Selection Board) then he must gain one in the unusual way. Commissions sometimes were gained by the lower deck—‘aft through the hawsehole’ was the technical expression. Albert must begin as a seaman and work his way upward. If he started with sound ideas on his profession, with enthusiasm—fanaticism—and a good general education, it might well come about. Agatha kept her two hundred pounds in the bank against that day, when he would need an outfit and some money to spend, and flung herself with ardour into the business of providing Albert with the grounding she thought necessary.
That was easy enough, for Albert was an amenable little boy, and he had not nearly enough personality (it would have been extraordinary if he had) to withstand the infection of all Agatha’s enthusiasm. A board school education was of course all his mother could afford for him, but a board school education backed up by strong home influence will do as much for any boy up to eleven years of age as any other form of education. Agatha had been taught at a young ladies’ college, but her sound common sense and mighty will enabled her to recover from this catastrophe. So that even while Agatha was entering upon the study of the higher aspects of Sea Power and gaining a blurred insight into the ballistics of big gunnery she was at the same time helping Albert with his sums and beginning his first tentative introduction to Drake and Nelson.
Tentative indeed, for Agatha found it impossible to bestow upon Albert the high dramatic insight which infused her dreams. Ships were just ships to young Albert. He could not picture them, as Agatha did, as minute fragments of man-made matter afloat on an enormous expanse of water, smaller relatively than grains of dust upon a tennis lawn, which yet could preserve, positively, and certainly, an island from a continent. Albert could not be impressed (perhaps it was more than could ever be expected of a ten-year-old) by the mighty pageant of England’s naval history. Lagos and Quiberon, the Nile and Trafalgar were to him mere affairs where Englishmen asserted their natural superiority over Frenchmen; their enormous consequences, both hidden and dramatic, were to him inconceivable. He was a matter-of-fact young man, and Agatha duly realized the fact, with vague disappointment. Even Agatha, with all her dreams and insight, could not foresee the sprouting of the grain she was sowing in such seemingly inhospitable soil.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WITH THE BIRTH of her child Agatha suddenly entered upon a wonderful late blooming, like the blossoming of an autumn rose. She put on a little more flesh—but flesh in the 1800s was in no way the abomination it was to become in later years. When Agatha walked nowadays she gave hints of broad, motherly hips and ample, comfortable thighs beneath her skirt, and her arms were very, very plump and round, and her face had filled out smoothly and deliciously, accentuating the creaminess of her really lovely complexion. She was a fine Junoesque woman now, stately, queenly even, and her stateliness was borne out by the dignified placidity of her facial expression. She was a mother to be proud of—a mother, especially, to admire; small wonder then, that young Albert was strongly influenced by her ideas and never dreamed of acting contrary to them.
Little Mr. Gold loved her at first sight. He was a nice refined little gentlemanly man, whose name was most eminently appropriate, for he had hair of pale gold (not as much now, alas, as he once had had) and gold-rimmed spectacles, and across his insignificant little stomach was a gold watch chain with a gold medal. He was neat in his dress and precise in his habits, and when one was once able to overlook the faintly receding chin and the general lack of personality about his face he was quite a handsome little fellow; it was a pity that all his character had been refined right away. Mr. Gold in conversation often made great play with remarks about ‘leading boys instead of driving them’ and ‘kindliness always tells in the long run’, and these, it is to be feared, were outward signs of inward timidity, for Mr. Gold was a master at an elementary school—at the school Albert attended, in fact. Mr. Gold, when he was taking a class, would often make a great show of anger, he would sha
ke his fists and try to make his eyes (little pale blue eyes) flash fire, and he flattered himself that by so doing he was successful in intimidating the boys, but Mr. Gold never entered into conflict of personality with boys singly, never caned one, lout of fourteen or child of eight, without feeling an inward tremor of doubt—‘What on earth shall I do if he won’t hold out his hand when I tell him?’ Mr. Gold had even developed the weakest characteristic of a master; he would send big riotous boys to the headmaster for quite minor offences, dodging a personal clash under the voiced explanation that they had done something much too wicked for him to deal with.
All this, though, was quite lost on young Albert when he was moved up from the infants’ school and entered Mr. Gold’s class in the boys’ school. If Mr. Gold had any effect at all upon Albert, it was a slight impression of neatness and dapperness; Albert had too great a respect for authority to dream that it might ever be possible for a master to have limbs of water and a heart of fear. And when, one evening, just after school, Albert fell down in the playground and cut his chin rather badly, Albert was quite grateful to Mr. Gold for the kindly manner in which he washed the cut and staunched the bleeding and inquired how he was feeling now; and finally Albert took it quite kindly that Mr. Gold should walk down Colchester Road with him in case he should feel ill on the way, and to explain to his mother that the bloodstains on his shirt and collar were not really his fault.
It was of course teatime when Mr. Gold and Albert reached No. 37 Colchester Road; the china gleamed upon the tablecloth and the kettle steamed beside the fire. What could be more natural than that Mr. Gold should be asked to have a cup? And nothing could be more natural than that Mr. Gold, landlady-ridden bachelor that he was, should yearn for the comfort of Mrs. Brown’s sitting-room and fireside, and should accept with alacrity—alacrity which warmed into well-being when Mr. Gold began to notice Mrs. Brown’s beautiful complexion and well-filled bodice.
Young Albert, of course, as soon as the novelty of having a schoolmaster to tea wore off, found the situation irksome and quietly made his way out of the room, but Mr. Gold lingered. He expanded in the grateful warmth of the fire and Agatha’s well-trained deference towards the superior sex. They chatted amicably enough for quite a while before at last Mr. Gold took himself off after having begged permission to come again, and Agatha at his departure found herself almost dreamy. Queenly she was, but she was of that type of queen which inclines towards a Prince Consort. Mr. Gold’s personified inadequacy made a very definite appeal to her. Why, he was almost shorter than she; she could pick him up and carry him if she wanted to. And he was so refined and gentlemanly too (as a matter of fact, ‘refined’ was the most frequent word on his lips), while he avoided being so terrifyingly of the public school class as Commander Saville-Samarez. Agatha actually began to calculate what effect a marriage with Mr. Gold might have upon her cherished ambition for Albert, and she decided it would be a good one.
And of course, Agatha having decided that, Mr. Gold’s career as a bachelor was as good as ended. Not that he was unwilling; he walked away from No. 37 through the dusky side streets with his mind full of rosy visions. Mr. Gold was not at all a man to think often about arms and legs, and certainly not about the other parts of the female body, but he caught himself doing so quite often that evening. The hang of the back of Agatha’s skirt, and her neat hands, and her sweet face and firm bosom all conspired to set him imagining. Next morning in class he treated Albert with such downright favouritism that Albert’s fellow nine-year-olds turned and rent him at playtime.
But one single moment of expansion sufficed to destroy all Mr. Gold’s chances. The pity of it was that he was never to know what it was which snatched from his reach all Agatha’s sweet charms, which deprived him of the encirclement of her round white arms, which barred him for ever from the paradise of her breast and the calm sweetness of her throat. It was at Mr. Gold’s third visit, or it may have been his fourth—it was his last, at any rate. Mr. Gold was sitting by the fire in the single armchair; he was comfortably inflated with tea and hot buttered toast and an extraordinary good opinion of himself; all three combined to bulge out his waistcoat.
Agatha, of course, as an inferior female ought to do, was sitting before the fire on a less comfortable chair, bent over her sewing. The charming femininity of the pose made a vast appeal to Mr. Gold; he admired the bent head and neck with the firelight playing upon them; whiteness and roundness combined to set little pink pictures moving at the back of his mind. He even visualized Agatha’s legs in their trim stockings—and of course, as the old vulgar saying has it, there was something in her stocking besides her leg! Agatha and a bit of money; an efficient housekeeper and a white-armed wife! The picture was far too irresistible. Mr. Gold puffed himself out a little more; soon he would propose, and he would taste the honeyed sweetness of those demure lips. Meanwhile, the present line of conversation was pleasant; he continued it, laying down the law to the accompaniment of Agatha’s dutiful ‘Reallys?’ and ‘Of courses’.
Agatha too, as she sewed, had little pictures, only not nearly as defined, at the back of her mind. Not, of course, that she visualized any normally clothed portion whatever of Mr. Gold’s anatomy. Agatha did not have that sort of imagination. But she had vague ideas of feeling Mr. Gold’s weak little face pressing upon her breast, and of clasping him in her arms, and of spending every evening as a wife should in the less comfortable of the two chairs by the fire while a tired husband told her what she ought to think about the world in general. But she suddenly stopped sewing, aghast, when the import of Mr. Gold’s latest remarks penetrated to her active intelligence.
“And all this money we spend on unproductive things too,” Mr. Gold was saying. “I don’t believe in it. A one-and-six-penny income tax will ruin this country before very long. Look at the money we spend on the Army and the Navy. Millions. This Dreadnought that they speak about. Twelve-inch guns and all. To my mind it’s only an excuse for spending money so that there will be more places for people’s nephews and cousins. What do we want a Navy for? Who’s going to attack us, and what good would they get by it, and what harm would it do, anyway? A Navy doesn’t do any good to anyone except the people who get good jobs in it. Germany’s getting just as bad, apparently. It’s all a lot of silly dangerous nonsense. Look at the last war. What right had we got in South Africa? None at all. We were wrong to fight, and it was the hotheads who forced us into it. I said so all along, although of course it made me unpopular. That was why I had to change my school and come to Colchester Road. They called me a pro-Boer, and all that sort of thing. But I stuck it out. I’m a man of peace, I am.”
Mr. Gold only ceased when he noticed the look on Agatha’s face. That so alarmed him that he got up from his chair.
“Good gracious, Mrs. Brown, whatever’s the matter? Are you unwell?”
“No,” said Agatha, shrinking away from him. “No.”
She was merely appalled by the heresies she had heard enunciated. That Mr. Gold, whom she thought she liked, should be a Little Englander, an advocate of disarmament, a pro-Boer, a scoffer at the Dreadnought! It was far too terrible for words. At the same moment she realized what a terribly narrow escape she had had. She dreaded to think what the result upon Albert might have been had he had Mr. Gold as a stepfather. Fancy a world without a British Navy! It was dreadful. Mr. Gold, try as he would, could have thought of nothing to say that could have hurt her more..
“No,” said Agatha. “I’m quite well.”
Quite unconsciously she was imitating the heroines of the novels she had read in the dead old days before the British Navy took hold of her. She ‘drew herself up to her full height’, her eyes ‘flashed fire’, she ‘made an imperious gesture’.
“Please—” said Mr. Gold.
“I—I think it is time for you to go,” said Agatha.
Poor Mr. Gold simply could not understand it.
“But, Mrs. Brown—”
All Agatha did was to walk
across the room and open the door, and it would have taken someone of stronger personality than Mr. Gold to have withstood the implied command. He crept out crestfallen, and Agatha shut the parlour door decisively behind him. Nothing remained for Mr. Gold to do except to take his hat and coat from the pegs on the landing, stumble downstairs, and let himself out.
“Now listen, Mrs. Rodgers,” said Agatha that evening, “if that—man ever comes again, tell him I’m not at home. You understand?”
And she looked so queenly and her eyes flashed so bright as she said it that Mrs. Rodgers could only say, “Lor, mum, yes, mum,” and gaze at her with admiration and without a thought of asking questions. Moreover, when Mr. Gold, inevitably, came calling again, she conveyed Agatha’s message to him with such force and unction as simply to infuriate the unfortunate little man. He had written to her already, and Agatha had simply ignored his letter. He made up for it in the end by calling Albert out of class and giving him a good hiding for no reason whatever.
When Albert told his mother about it later Agatha merely nodded and offered no consolation. She did not mind at all if antipathy sprang up between Albert and the heretical Mr. Gold. Quite on the contrary. Besides, Agatha knew, without even Albert telling her, that hidings from Mr. Gold were not of much account.