Erb/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
ROSALIND brought Louisa back to town, the vacation being over, and Camberwell desiring to go on with its lessons in voice production, and Lady Frances, hearing of this from Alice, antedated her trip to the Continent; Louisa, dazed by the rapidity of events, said good-bye with apparent calm to her brother and her three most recent fiancés.
“Likely as not,” said Louisa casually, “I shall marry one of you when I come back!”
“Which?” inquired the three youths eagerly.
“The one that's got the most money.”
“Ah!” said the young baker from Rotherhithe New Road contentedly.
“And the most sense.”
“Good!” remarked the assistant from the Free Library.
“And the best temper.”
“Right-o!” said the booking clerk from Walworth Road station.
Lady Frances asked Erb to get an evening paper, and he went to the small bookstall on the platform. The train was on the point of starting, and he took up a Conservative journal. As he did so, he glanced at the placard that was being pinned to the stall, and observed a line “Massacre of English Commission in Morocco.” He quickly bought another journal of an earlier edition. Later, when the train had gone, he found in the “fudge” of the first journal a brief message, printed unevenly, with a similar heading:—
“The Foreign Office has received news of the massacre of the English Commission recently sent out to Morocco. No particulars are to hand, but the Commission included the Lieutenant the Hon.”
“Her young man!” cried Erb distressedly. “Thought as much! This'll be a fearful upset for her.”
He had some idea of going at once to Eaton Square, but this seemed of little use, and he had become so much accustomed to consulting Rosalind that he decided instead to go down to Southampton Street. Arrived there, he found commotion of such importance that this trouble concerning Lady Frances took a second place.
An ambulance stood inside the gate, near to the specimens of graveyard statuary, and on the steps of the house, a constable.
“Are you,” asks C 243, barring the way, “any relation to the deceased? By deceased,” explains the constable, giving additional information grudgingly, he did not, of course, mean deceased exactly, but nearly as good as that; he means old gentleman—white-haired old gentleman—who was knocked down by a cab in the Strand not half an hour ago, as he stooped down in the middle of the roadway to pick up a halfpenny he dropped. Happened just at the corner of Wellington Street, it did. Knew the old chap by sight. One of what C 243 ventures to call the regulars. See them every day between Bedford Street and Wellington Street. Didn't know their names, of course, says constable argumentatively, but, bless one's soul, you know their faces so well that, when one of them drops out, it makes you feel as though you've lost a personal friend. Every one of them on the cadge, so C 243 understands, and apparently manage to live on by borrowing from each other. A rum life, if ever there was one; no two ways about that.”
“Is he still able to recognise anybody?”
Old chap's first words were “Not a hospital; take me home.” Constable inquired where was home, and old chap managed to give the address. Whereupon constable, after deliberation with a colleague, decided to take four-wheeler and see old chap home as desired. Thought, perhaps, he was only a bit stunned. Or, perhaps, dazed. Instead of which, coming past the Obelisk, old chap suddenly lurched forward, and thoroughly collapsed.”
The small servant, tamed for the moment, came out and beckoned. The voice of Rosalind called gently.
“I am here,” replies Erb.
“Want you just one moment.”
A boy doctor who stood inside the room, endeavouring to wear a look of uncountable years, nodded curtly, and went to the foot of the sofa. On the sofa lay the Professor, with a rug thrown over him, the rug close up to his chin, one hand free, and travelling restlessly over the pattern.
“From whose bourne,” whispered the Professor, “no traveller returns.' You are a good lad, and you will look after her.”
“If she'll let me,” says Erb. “How are you feeling, sir, by this time?”
“Look after her better than I have done. See that when you arrive at my state, laddie, you—you can glance back on your life with content.”
Erb, with a kindly touch, pushed the Professor's hair from his eyes, and the old man looked up gratefully. Erb touched his hand, and the hand gripped his as though with desire to attach itself to something reliable.
“I'm slipping,” whispered the Professor. He closed his eyes, and presently reopened them as with difficulty. “'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.' Give me the word, sir, give me the word. What in Heaven's name,” with sudden indignation, “is the use of having a prompter?”
Rosalind, keeping her tears back, came with the heavy volume, opening it quickly at the place where in a steel engraving a ringletted youth in a steel engraving was addressing soldiers. Erb discovering the lines with the aid of Rosalind's finger, gave the cue. “For he to-day” The old Professor went on. “'For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my be-rother! be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition, And gentlemen in England, And gentlemen in England—and gentlemen in England.' No use,” said the Professor weakly, “my study's gone.”
“Don't bother about it, sir.”
“Laddie,” said the Professor, “you—you think me a thriftless, miserable wastrel.”
“No, no,” answered Erb. “We're none of us perfect.”
“I've reached my last hour, and the time has come for plain speech. I've been,” a smile dared to creep half-way across the Professor's face. “I've been a fraud.”
“Father,” said Rosalind brokenly. “You've always been the dearest, dearest.”
The boy doctor, snatching the opportunity to whisper to Erb, who could not loose the Professor's hand, said that he had administered a sleeping draught: if the Professor desired to say anything it would be better to allow him to speak without interruption.
“I have been a fraud,” repeated the Professor, with something of relish. “I have been afraud. 'Neither a borrower or a lender be. For borrowing oft'”
“You've always been welcome, sir.”
“There is a note in my desk to send to the Era. I have often, in my salad days, advertised in the Era. I think they will put it in.”
“I'll pay them to, if necessary.”
The Professor gave a faint echo of a chuckle. “How they will talk about it in the Strand! I'd give the remainder of my life to hear them.”
The old, old mouth, twisted in the effort to display amusement, and remained twisted; one eyelid nearly closed. The boy doctor looked anxiously from the foot of the sofa: Rosalind knelt.
“You're going to have a nice long sleep, sir,” said Erb, bending down. “And you'll wake up a different man, bless you.”
“I shall wake up,” repeated the Professor slowly, “wake up a different man.”
Both eyelids closing now, he turned his white head a little towards the wall. Presently his grip of Erb's hand relaxed, and Erb, disengaging himself, went with the others to the window, where the three spoke in an undertone, Erb holding Rosalind's elbows supportingly. A slight groan from the sofa.
“All over,” announced the boy doctor, with a desperate effort to assume the air of one used to making such announcements, and rendered callous by long centuries of habit. “I'll let the coroner's officer know. Don't mind my running off, do you?”
The Professor's words were counted as the mere wandering of speech, and dismissed from memory until, when the inquest was over, and some days later the journey to Honor Oak cemetery and back at an end, Erb took upon himself the duty of examining the locked drawers of the desk. Then it was found that tardily in his life, the Professor had hinted at truth, for books entitled Post Office Savings Bank were discovered there, and it was realised that this old spendthrift, this most careless member of a careless profession, had hoarded carefully throughout his life, engaging stray half-crowns, only to add them instantly to his store, and the five brown covered books announced that to his credit stood what seemed to Erb and to Rosalind the extravagant fortune of nearly four hundred pounds. A will, drawn up in commendable order, directed that all this was left to “my dear daughter Rosalind, and may she forgive her father for many shortcomings, and think of him if she can, with affection and regard.”
“This,” said Erb, when he had reckoned up the amounts on a slip of paper, “this is very satisfactory for you, but it makes all the difference to me.”
“It's going to make no sort of difference whatever,” said Rosalind emphatically.
“Money matters always do.”
“Depends on the people who have the money. Money in itself doesn't bring happiness, but it doesn't follow that it destroys it. Your Lady Frances, for instance”
“What makes you call her my Lady Frances?”
“She looks upon you as her property,” said Rosalind, turning away.
“If I hadn't got such a stiff collar on I'd laugh,” declared Erb. “By-the-by, I'm very glad to see by to-day's papers that her sweetheart was on his way back before that nasty affair took place out near Tetuan; mysterious thing, rather. Been telegraphed for apparently, by somebody.”
“I know.”
“You saw about it in the paper?”
“I haven't seen the paper,” said Rosalind.
“Well, but how did you know it?”
“I sent the telegram,” she said quietly. “I thought it better he should be back here. I didn't want her to get you.”
Erb took her hands. She tried to keep her lips from his, but she tried for a moment only.
“This simplifies matters,” he said. “I never could tell whether you”
“You never asked!”
“People will say I married you for your money,” he said half jokingly.
“And I shall know,” replied Rosalind, patting his face, “that you married me because—because you liked me.”