CHAPTER VII—“PASHUN” IN THE KITCHEN

In the conducting of a first love-affair one inevitably bungles. When the young gentleman in love happens to be older than the lady, his lack of finesse may be forgiven by her still greater inexperience. When the young gentleman is considerably less than half his fianc茅e’s years and, moreover, she is an expert in courtship by reason of many suitors, the case calls for the utmost delicacy.

Teddy was keenly sensitive to the precariousness of his situation. He was aware that, if he confessed himself, there wasn’t a living soul would take him seriously. Even Dearie and Jimmie Boy, to whom he told almost everything, would laugh at him. It made him feel very lonely; it was bard to think that you had to be laughed at just because you were young. Of course ordinary boys, who were going to be greengrocers or policemen when they grew up, didn’t fall in love; but boys who already felt the shadow of future greatness brooding over them might. In fact, such boys were just the sort of boys to pine away and die if their love went unrequited—the sort of fine-natured boys who, whether love came to them at nine or twenty, could love only once.

Here he was secretly engaged to Vashti and threatened by many unknown rivals. He didn’t know her surname and he didn’t know her address. He had to find her; when he found her he wasn’t sure what he ought to do with her. But find her he must. Four days had passed since she had accepted his hand. If he were not to lose her, he must certainly get into communication with her. How? To make the most discreet inquiries of so magic a person as Mrs. Sheerug would be to tell her everything. If she knew everything, she might not want him in her house, for she believed that he had feigned illness solely out of fondness for herself. The only other person to whom he could turn was Mr. Sheerug, with whom already he shared one guilty secret; but from this house of lightning arrivals and departures Mr. Sheerug had vanished—vanished as completely as if he had mounted on a broomstick and been whisked off into thin air. Teddy did not discover this till lunch.

Lunch was a typically Sheerugesque makeshift, consisting of boiled Spanish onions, sardines and cream-puffs. It was served in a dark room, like a Teniers’ interior, with plates lining the walls arranged on shelves. There was a door at either end, one leading into the kitchen, the other into the hall. When one of these doors banged, which it did quite frequently, a plate fell down. Perhaps it was to economize on this constant toll of breakages that Mrs. Sheerug used enamel-ware on her table. The table had a frowsy appearance, as though the person who had set the breakfast had forgotten to clear away the last night’s supper, and the person who had set the lunch had been equally careless about the breakfast. Mrs. Sheerug explained: “I always keep it set, my dear; we’re so irregular and it saves worry when our friends drop in at odd seasons.”

This room, as was the case with half the rooms in the house, had steps leading down to it, the floor of the hall being on a higher level. Whether it was that the house had muddled itself into odd angles and useless passages under the influence of Mrs. Sheerug’s tenancy, or that the mazelike originality of its architecture had effected the pattern of her character, there could be no doubt that Orchid Lodge, with its rambling spaciousness, awkward comfort, and dusty hospitality, was the exact replica in bricks and mortar of its mistress’s personality.

“What’s the matter, Teddy? Don’t you like Spanish onions? You’ll have to make yourself like them. They’re good for you. I’ve known them cure consumption.”

“I haven’t got consumption.”

“But why don’t you eat them? You keep looking about you as if you’d lost something.”

“I was wondering whether Mr. Sheerug was coming.”

She rested her fork on her plate, tapping with it and gazing at him. “Well, I never! You’re a queer child for scattering your affections. You’re the first little boy I ever knew to take a fancy to Alonzo. He’s so silent and looks so gruff.”

Teddy laughed. “But he talks to me. When shall I see him again?”

“Upon my soul! What’s the man done to you? I don’t know, Teddy—I never do know when I’m going to see him. He goes away to earn money—that’s what men are made for—and he stays away sometimes for a week and sometimes for months; it all depends on how long he takes to find it There have been times,” she raised her voice with a note of pride, “when my husband has come back a very rich man. Once, for almost a year, we lived in West Kensington and kept our carriage. But there have been times——-” She left the sentence unended and shook her head. “It’s ups and downs, Teddy; and if we’re kind when we have money, the good Lord provides for us when we haven’t. ’Tisn’t money, it’s the heart inside us that makes us happy.”

Teddy wasn’t paying attention to the faery-godmother’s philosophy; he was thinking of Alonzo Sheerug, who had gone away to earn money. He pictured him as a fat explorer, panting off into a wilderness with a pail. When the pail was filled, and not until it was filled, he would return to his wife. That was what men were made for—to be fetch-and-carry persons. Teddy was thinking that if he could reach Mr. Sheerug, he would ask him to carry an extra bucket.

That an interval might elapse between his flow of questions, he finished his Spanish onion. Then, “I’d like to write him a question if you’d send it.”

“Oh, come!” She patted his hand. “There’s no question that you could ask him that I couldn’t answer. He’s only a man.”

Teddy knew that he would have to ask her something; so he asked her a question, but not the question. “Who is Hal?”

“My son.”

“Does he like the lady who sang in the bedroom?”

“He——” She frowned. “You’re too curious, Teddy; you want to know too much. See, here’s Harriet waiting to take the dishes and get on with her work.”

Mrs. Sheerug rose and trundled up the steps. Since it was she who had invited his curiosity, Teddy felt a little crestfallen at the injustice of her rebuff. He was preparing to follow her, when he caught the red-headed giantess from the kitchen winking at him as though she would squeeze her eye out of its socket. In her frantic efforts to attract his notice her entire face was convulsed. As the swish of Mrs. Sheerug’s skirts grew faint across the hall, the girl tiptoed over to Teddy and stood staring at him with her fists planted firmly on the table. Slowly she bent down—so slowly that he wondered what was coming.

“Does ’e like ’er!” she whispered scornfully. “Why, ’e loves ’er, you little Gubbins. Wot on h’earth possessed yer ter go and h’arsk ’is ’eart-sick ma a h’idiot quesching like that?”

To be twice blamed for a fault which had not been of his own choosing was too much. There was anger as well as a hint of tears in his voice when he answered, “My name isn’t Gubbins. And it wasn’t an idiot question. She made me ask her something, so I asked her that.”

The girl wagged her head with an immense display of tragedy. His anger seemed only to deepen her despondency. “H’it’s tumble,” she sighed, “tumble, h’all this business abart love. ’Ere’s h’every one wantin’ some one ter love ’em, and some of ’em is lovin’ the wrong pusson, and some of ’em is bein’ loved by three or four, and some-some of h’us ain’t got no one. H’it don’t look as though we h’ever shall ’ave. If I wuz Gawd——” She checked herself, awed by the Irreverence of her supposition. “If I wuz Gawd,” she repeated, lowering her voice, “I’d come right darn from ’eaven and sort awt the proper couples. H’I wouldn’t loll around with them there h’angels till h’every gal ’ad got ‘er feller. Gawd ought ter ’ave been a woman, I tell yer strite. If ’E wuz, things wouldn’t be in this ’ere muddle. A she-Gawd wouldn’t let h’us maike such fools of h’ourselves, if you’ll h’excuse me strong lang-widge.”

Teddy stared at her. It wasn’t her “strong langwidge” that made him stare; it was the confession that her words implied. “You’re—you’re in love?”

She jerked up her head defiantly. “In love! Yus, I’m in love. And ’oo isn’t?”

He watched her clearing the table; when that was done, he followed her into the kitchen. The idea that she was suffering from his complaint fascinated him. She of all persons should be able to tell him how to proceed in the matter.

She paused in her washing of the dishes; across her shoulder she had caught him looking at her. “You may well stare,” she said. “H’I’m a cureehosity, I h’am. I wuz left.” She nodded impressively.

He didn’t understand, but he knew the information was supposed to be staggering. “Left!”

“Yus. I wuz left—left h’at a work’ouse and brought h’up in a h’orphanage. P’raps I never wuz born. P’raps I never ’ad no parents. There’s no one can say. I wuz found on a doorstep, all finely dressed and tied h’up in a fish-basket—just left. H’I’m different from h’other gals, h’I am. My ma may ’ave been a queen—there’s never no tellin’.”

Harriet sank into a chair. Supporting her chin in her hand, she gazed wistfully into the fire. “Wot is it that yer wants wiv me, Gubbins?”

“Is it very difficult to get married?” he faltered.

She nodded. “One ‘as ter ’ave money. If a man didn’t ’ave no money, ’is wife would ’ave ter go out charing. She wouldn’t like that.”

“What’s the least a man ought to have?”

She deliberated. “Depends on the lady. If it wuz me, I should want five pounds. But look ’ere, wot maikes yer h’arsk so many queschings? Surely a little chap like you ain’t in love?”

He flushed. “Five pounds! But wouldn’t three be enough if two people were very, very much in love?”

“Five pounds, Gubbins.” She rose from her chair and went back to her dishes. “Not a penny less. I knows wot I’m talkin’ abart My ma wuz a queen, p’raps; ter h’offer a lady less would be a h’insult.”