The City of Beautiful Nonsense Part 23

But John had learnt by experience that if you take thirty s.h.i.+llings from seventeen pounds, it leaves fifteen pounds ten, an odd amount, demanding that those ten s.h.i.+llings be spent also to equalise matters. Then the fifteen pounds which is left is still immense and the process beginning all over again, there is finally left but a quota of what had been at first. With fifteen pounds in bank notes in his letter-case and two pounds in gold in his pocket, he found himself looking in the window of Payne and Welcome's, where a little Nankin milk jug of some unimpeachable dynasty was standing in all expectation, just waiting to catch the eye of such a person as himself who might chance to pa.s.s by.

That afternoon, Jill was coming to tea--her first visit to Fetter Lane, made, as he thought, simply in honour of his departure. And that little milk jug was begging to come, too.

He stood for a while and stared at it. It would not be more than fifteen s.h.i.+llings--expensive, too, at that. Fifteen s.h.i.+llings would make no impression upon so vast a sum as seventeen pounds. A voice whispered it in his ear, from behind his back,--just over his shoulder.

"You want a milk jug," said the voice, "and it's a beautiful blue. It will go wonderfully with the teapot and the little blue and white cups and saucers. Get it, man! Get it!" and it reminded him in a joking way, with a subtle, cunning laugh, of his philosophy when he was a boy.

"What are sweets for, but to eat?" "What is money for, but to spend?"

With sudden decision, he walked in; but it was not through the entrance of the jeweller's shop. He marched into the confessional box in the chapel of unredemption. There, pulling out his three five-pound notes and his two sovereigns, he planked them down upon the counter.

"I want ten s.h.i.+llings on those," said he.

They were used to John's eccentricities there, but they never thought him so mad as this.

"Why, it's seventeen pounds," said the man.

"That's quite right," said John. "I counted it myself. And I want ten s.h.i.+llings on it."

Ten s.h.i.+llings would feed him for a week. He strode out of the shop again with the ten s.h.i.+llings in his pocket and the seventeen pounds safe in the keeping of the high priest. There was a man who owed him fourteen s.h.i.+llings, and who, when the time came to go to Venice, might possibly be induced to part with that necessary ten, if he were asked for it as a loan. A man will willingly lend you ten s.h.i.+llings if he owes you fourteen; it is the paying you back that he does not like.

As he pa.s.sed out into the street, John kept his face rigidly averted from the little Nankin milk jug. He had played that milk jug a sly, and a nasty trick. It was really nothing to be proud about.

When he returned to Number 39, there was a man waiting outside his door, a man dressed in a light-brown tweed, the colour of ripening corn. He had on a s.h.i.+ny-red silk tie, adorned with a pin--a horseshoe set with pearls. His face was round, fat and solemn--the solemnity that made you laugh. He put John in good spirits from the loss of the Nankin milk jug, the moment he saw him. Someone had left the door into the street open and so he had come upstairs.

"Who are you?" asked John.

"Well--my name's Chesterton, sir, Arthur Chesterton."

John opened his door with the innocence of a babe, and the man followed him into the room, closely at his heels.

"And what do you want?" asked John.

Mr. Chesterton handed him a paper. John looked it through.

"Yes--of course--my two quarter's rent. They shall be paid," he said easily. "There's money due to me next month."

Mr. Chesterton coughed behind his hand.

"It must be now," he said quietly. "That is to say--I must wait here till I get it."

A bailiff! And Jill was coming to tea! In another half hour she would be there! She knew he was poor; she thought Fetter Lane a terrible neighbourhood; but with all her imagination, she had not conceived anything as terrible as this.

There was only one way; to explain everything. He had a lady coming to tea with him that afternoon--a lady--did he understand? Anyhow, he nodded his head. Well--it was quite impossible for her to find him there--a bailiff! It was not his fault, of course, that he was a bailiff, but he must see how impossible the position was. The little man nodded his head again. Well, would he go away; just for a short time, till they had had tea. He could return then, John promised he would let him in. He knew that once a bailiff was out of possession, he was powerless; but this was a matter of honour. On his honour he would let him in again.

Mr. Chesterton blinked his eyes.

"Sometimes," he replied quietly--"Sometimes they tell me it's their father as is comin'--then again, if it's a woman, she says her husband'll be back in a minute and her husband's always a man with an 'orrible bad temper what's liable to do dangerous things. And sometimes, they say it's a girl they're sweet on--same as you."

"But I'll swear it's true!" cried John wildly.

Mr. Chesterton smiled.

"Wouldn't payin' the money be better than swearin'?" said he. "It's only fifteen pounds. Sometimes they gets rid of me that way--and it's the only successful way of doin' it. You see I'm inside now. I'm the nine points of the law now. If I was outside, I'd be only one--you'd be the nine, then--see. You'd be able to lock your door and make a long nose at me out of the window. Lord! the times I've said that to people--and they don't seem to see the truth of it--not they."

John had every sympathy with their obtuseness. If he saw the point of it himself, it was only because he knew it would not be so in his instance.

"Then you won't go?" he said.

Mr. Chesterton shook his head, quite patiently.

"Do you ever get kicked out of a place into the street?" asked John.

The man was so small that the question would rise naturally to the minds of quite a lot of people.

He smiled amiably.

"Yes--they do that sometimes. But two months, without the option, for a.s.sault ain't pleasant, you know. I shouldn't care for it myself. I'd sooner 'ave the a.s.sault, it's over quicker."

There are some tragedies in life in which, if you do not find place for laughter, you become melodramatic--a sin which is unforgivable.

John just saved the position in time. He sat down in a chair and laughed aloud.

"And till I've paid this money," he said. "I've got to put you up.

Where are you going to sleep? I've only got a bedroom besides this and a cupboard that holds two hundredweight of coal on the landing."

Mr. Chesterton looked about him.

"That settle looks comfortable enough," said he. "I've slep' worse than that." He crossed the room and felt the springs of it with his fist.

"But it's a small place. I'm afraid I shall be a bit in the way."

"My Lord!" John jumped up again. "You will this afternoon." He was to have told Jill many things that afternoon. Now this ruined everything.

They would have to go out to tea, because there was no paying of the money. He could not redeem his seventeen pounds and settle it with that. There would be nothing left with which to go to Venice and the calculations of that little old white-haired lady who was waiting for him to put his arms about her neck had become so small, so infinitely small, that he had not the heart to add to them by so much as a figure of seven.

"And you don't believe that a lady's coming to tea with me?" he said excitedly.

Mr. Chesterton spread out a pair of dirty hands.

"I know that lady so well," he said. "She's always every inch a lady who wouldn't understand the likes of me. But I'm quite easy to understand. Tell her I'm a friend of yours. I won't give the game away."

Oh! It was ludicrous! The laugh came again quickly to John's lips, but as soon it died away. So much was at stake. He had pictured it all so plainly. She would be disappointed when she heard he was going. He would ask her why that look had pa.s.sed across her eyes. Her answer would be evasive, and then, word by word, look by look, he would lead her to the very door of his heart until the cry--"I love you"--the most wonderful words to say--the most terribly wonderful words to mean, would be wrung from his lips into her ears.

And now this imperturbable fiend of a bailiff, with his very natural incredulity and his simple way of expressing it, had come to wreck the greatest moment of his life.

John looked him up and down.

"What sort of a friend do you think I could introduce you as?" he asked.

"Do you think you look like a friend of mine?"

The little man glanced down at his boots, at the light-brown tweed trousers, upturned and showing a pair of woollen socks not far removed in colour from that of his tie.