The Little White Bird; Or, Adventures in Kensington Gardens Read online

  III. Her Marriage, Her Clothes, Her Appetite, and an Inventory of HerFurniture

  A week or two after I dropped the letter I was in a hansom on my way tocertain barracks when loud above the city's roar I heard that accursedhaw-haw-haw, and there they were, the two of them, just coming out ofa shop where you may obtain pianos on the hire system. I had the merestglimpse of them, but there was an extraordinary rapture on her face, andhis head was thrown proudly back, and all because they had been orderinga piano on the hire system.

  So they were to be married directly. It was all rather contemptible,but I passed on tolerantly, for it is only when she is unhappy thatthis woman disturbs me, owing to a clever way she has at such times oflooking more fragile than she really is.

  When next I saw them, they were gazing greedily into the window of thesixpenny-halfpenny shop, which is one of the most deliciously dramaticspots in London. Mary was taking notes feverishly on a slip of paperwhile he did the adding up, and in the end they went away gloomilywithout buying anything. I was in high feather. "Match abandoned,ma'am," I said to myself; "outlook hopeless; another visit to theGovernesses' Agency inevitable; can't marry for want of a kitchenshovel." But I was imperfectly acquainted with the lady.

  A few days afterward I found myself walking behind her. There issomething artful about her skirts by which I always know her, thoughI can't say what it is. She was carrying an enormous parcel that mighthave been a bird-cage wrapped in brown paper, and she took it intoa bric-a-brac shop and came out without it. She then ran rather thanwalked in the direction of the sixpenny-halfpenny shop. Now mysteryof any kind is detestable to me, and I went into the bric-a-bracshop, ostensibly to look at the cracked china; and there, still on thecounter, with the wrapping torn off it, was the article Mary had soldin order to furnish on the proceeds. What do you think it was? It was awonderful doll's house, with dolls at tea downstairs and dolls going tobed upstairs, and a doll showing a doll out at the front door. Lovinglips had long ago licked most of the paint off, but otherwise the thingwas in admirable preservation; obviously the joy of Mary's childhood, ithad now been sold by her that she might get married.

  "Lately purchased by us," said the shopwoman, seeing me look at the toy,"from a lady who has no further use for it."

  I think I have seldom been more indignant with Mary. I bought the doll'shouse, and as they knew the lady's address (it was at this shop that Ifirst learned her name) I instructed them to send it back to her withthe following letter, which I wrote in the shop: "Dear madam, don't beridiculous. You will certainly have further use for this. I am, etc.,the Man Who Dropped the Letter."

  It pained me afterward, but too late to rescind the order, to reflectthat I had sent her a wedding present; and when next I saw her she hadbeen married for some months. The time was nine o'clock of a Novemberevening, and we were in a street of shops that has not in twenty yearsdecided whether to be genteel or frankly vulgar; here it minces in thefashion, but take a step onward and its tongue is in the cup of theice-cream man. I usually rush this street, which is not far from myrooms, with the glass down, but to-night I was walking. Mary was infront of me, leaning in a somewhat foolish way on the haw-er, and theywere chatting excitedly. She seemed to be remonstrating with him forgoing forward, yet more than half admiring him for not turning back, andI wondered why.

  And after all what was it that Mary and her painter had come out to do?To buy two pork chops. On my honour. She had been trying to persuadehim, I decided, that they were living too lavishly. That was why shesought to draw him back. But in her heart she loves audacity, and thatis why she admired him for pressing forward.

  No sooner had they bought the chops than they scurried away like twogleeful children to cook them. I followed, hoping to trace them to theirhome, but they soon out-distanced me, and that night I composed thefollowing aphorism: It is idle to attempt to overtake a pretty youngwoman carrying pork chops. I was now determined to be done with her.First, however, to find out their abode, which was probably within easydistance of the shop. I even conceived them lured into taking theirhouse by the advertisement, "Conveniently situated for the PorkEmporium."

  Well, one day--now this really is romantic and I am rather proud ofit. My chambers are on the second floor, and are backed by an anxiouslypolite street between which and mine are little yards called, I think,gardens. They are so small that if you have the tree your neighbour hasthe shade from it. I was looking out at my back window on the daywe have come to when whom did I see but the whilom nursery governesssitting on a chair in one of these gardens. I put up my eye-glass tomake sure, and undoubtedly it was she. But she sat there doing nothing,which was by no means my conception of the jade, so I brought afieldglass to bear and discovered that the object was merely a lady'sjacket. It hung on the back of a kitchen chair, seemed to be a furrything, and, I must suppose, was suspended there for an airing.

  I was chagrined, and then I insisted stoutly with myself that, as itwas not Mary, it must be Mary's jacket. I had never seen her wear sucha jacket, mind you, yet I was confident, I can't tell why. Do clothesabsorb a little of the character of their wearer, so that I recognisedthis jacket by a certain coquetry? If she has a way with her skirts thatalways advertises me of her presence, quite possibly she is as cunningwith jackets. Or perhaps she is her own seamstress, and puts in littletucks of herself.

  Figure it what you please; but I beg to inform you that I put on myhat and five minutes afterward saw Mary and her husband emerge from thehouse to which I had calculated that garden belonged. Now am I clever,or am I not?

  When they had left the street I examined the house leisurely, and adroll house it is. Seen from the front it appears to consist of a doorand a window, though above them the trained eye may detect anotherwindow, the air-hole of some apartment which it would be just likeMary's grandiloquence to call her bedroom. The houses on each side ofthis bandbox are tall, and I discovered later that it had once beenan open passage to the back gardens. The story and a half of which itconsists had been knocked up cheaply, by carpenters I should say ratherthan masons, and the general effect is of a brightly coloured van thathas stuck for ever on its way through the passage.

  The low houses of London look so much more homely than the tall onesthat I never pass them without dropping a blessing on their builders,but this house was ridiculous; indeed it did not call itself a house,for over the door was a board with the inscription "This space to besold," and I remembered, as I rang the bell, that this notice had beenup for years. On avowing that I wanted a space, I was admitted by anelderly, somewhat dejected looking female, whose fine figure was noton scale with her surroundings. Perhaps my face said so, for her firstremark was explanatory.

  "They get me cheap," she said, "because I drink."

  I bowed, and we passed on to the drawing-room. I forget whether I havedescribed Mary's personal appearance, but if so you have a picture ofthat sunny drawing-room. My first reflection was, How can she have foundthe money to pay for it all! which is always your first reflection whenyou see Mary herself a-tripping down the street.

  I have no space (in that little room) to catalogue all the whim-whamswith which she had made it beautiful, from the hand-sewn bell-rope whichpulled no bell to the hand-painted cigar-box that contained no cigars.The floor was of a delicious green with exquisite oriental rugs; greenand white, I think, was the lady's scheme of colour, something cool, youobserve, to keep the sun under. The window-curtains were of some rarematerial and the colour of the purple clematis; they swept the floorgrandly and suggested a picture of Mary receiving visitors. The pianowe may ignore, for I knew it to be hired, but there were many daintypieces, mostly in green wood, a sofa, a corner cupboard, and a mostcaptivating desk, which was so like its owner that it could have satdown at her and dashed off a note. The writing paper on this desk hadthe word Mary printed on it, implying that if there were other Marysthey didn't count. There were many oil-paintings on the walls, mostlywithout frames, and I must mention the chandelier, which
was obviouslyof fabulous worth, for she had encased it in a holland bag.

  "I perceive, ma'am," said I to the stout maid, "that your master is inaffluent circumstances."

  She shook her head emphatically, and said something that I failed tocatch.

  "You wish to indicate," I hazarded, "that he married a fortune."

  This time I caught the words. They were "Tinned meats," and havinguttered them she lapsed into gloomy silence.

  "Nevertheless," I said, "this room must have cost a pretty penny."

  "She done it all herself," replied my new friend, with concentratedscorn.

  "But this green floor, so beautifully stained--"

  "Boiling oil," said she, with a flush of honest shame, "and ashillingsworth o' paint."

  "Those rugs--"

  "Remnants," she sighed, and showed me how artfully they had been piecedtogether.

  "The curtains--"

  "Remnants."

  "At all events the sofa--"

  She raised its drapery, and I saw that the sofa was built of packingcases.

  "The desk--"

  I really thought that I was safe this time, for could I not see thedrawers with their brass handles, the charming shelf for books, thepigeon-holes with their coverings of silk?

  "She made it out of three orange boxes," said the lady, at last a littleawed herself.

  I looked around me despairingly, and my eye alighted on the hollandcovering. "There is a fine chandelier in that holland bag," I saidcoaxingly.

  She sniffed and was raising an untender hand, when I checked her."Forbear, ma'am," I cried with authority, "I prefer to believe in thatbag. How much to be pitied, ma'am, are those who have lost faith ineverything." I think all the pretty things that the little nurserygoverness had made out of nothing squeezed my hand for letting thechandelier off.

  "But, good God, ma'am," said I to madam, "what an exposure."

  She intimated that there were other exposures upstairs.

  "So there is a stair," said I, and then, suspiciously, "did she makeit?"

  No, but how she had altered it.

  The stair led to Mary's bedroom, and I said I would not look at that,nor at the studio, which was a shed in the garden.

  "Did she build the studio with her own hands?"

  No, but how she had altered it.

  "How she alters everything," I said. "Do you think you are safe, ma'am?"

  She thawed a little under my obvious sympathy and honoured me with someof her views and confidences. The rental paid by Mary and her husbandwas not, it appeared, one on which any self-respecting domestic couldreflect with pride. They got the house very cheap on the understandingthat they were to vacate it promptly if anyone bought it for buildingpurposes, and because they paid so little they had to submit to theindignity of the notice-board. Mary A---- detested the words "This spaceto be sold," and had been known to shake her fist at them. She was aselated about her house as if it were a real house, and always trembledwhen any possible purchaser of spaces called.

  As I have told you my own aphorism I feel I ought in fairness to recordthat of this aggrieved servant. It was on the subject of art. "Thedifficulty," she said, "is not to paint pictures, but to get frames forthem." A home thrust this.

  She could not honestly say that she thought much of her master's work.Nor, apparently, did any other person. Result, tinned meats.

  Yes, one person thought a deal of it, or pretended to do so; wasconstantly flinging up her hands in delight over it; had even beencaught whispering fiercely to a friend, "Praise it, praise it, praiseit!" This was when the painter was sunk in gloom. Never, as I could wellbelieve, was such a one as Mary for luring a man back to cheerfulness.

  "A dangerous woman," I said, with a shudder, and fell to examining apainting over the mantel-shelf. It was a portrait of a man, and hadimpressed me favourably because it was framed.

  "A friend of hers," my guide informed me, "but I never seed him."

  I would have turned away from it, had not an inscription on the picturedrawn me nearer. It was in a lady's handwriting, and these were thewords: "Fancy portrait of our dear unknown." Could it be meant for me? Icannot tell you how interested I suddenly became.

  It represented a very fine looking fellow, indeed, and not a day morethan thirty.

  "A friend of hers, ma'am, did you say?" I asked quite shakily. "How doyou know that, if you have never seen him?"

  "When master was painting of it," she said, "in the studio, he used tocome running in here to say to her such like as, 'What colour would youmake his eyes?'"

  "And her reply, ma'am?" I asked eagerly.

  "She said, 'Beautiful blue eyes.' And he said, 'You wouldn't make ita handsome face, would you?' and she says, 'A very handsome face.' Andsays he, 'Middle-aged?' and says she, 'Twenty-nine.' And I mind himsaying, 'A little bald on the top?' and she says, says she, 'Not atall.'"

  The dear, grateful girl, not to make me bald on the top.

  "I have seed her kiss her hand to that picture," said the maid.

  Fancy Mary kissing her hand to me! Oh, the pretty love!

  Pooh!

  I was staring at the picture, cogitating what insulting message I couldwrite on it, when I heard the woman's voice again. "I think she hasknown him since she were a babby," she was saying, "for this here was apresent he give her."

  She was on her knees drawing the doll's house from beneath the sofa,where it had been hidden away; and immediately I thought, "I shall slipthe insulting message into this." But I did not, and I shall tell youwhy. It was because the engaging toy had been redecorated by lovinghands; there were fresh gowns for all the inhabitants, and the paint onthe furniture was scarcely dry. The little doll's house was almost readyfor further use.

  I looked at the maid, but her face was expressionless. "Put it back,"I said, ashamed to have surprised Mary's pretty secret, and I left thehouse dejectedly, with a profound conviction that the little nurserygoverness had hooked on to me again.