10. X
"They're the most awful wretches, I assure you--the lot all about there."
"Then why do you want to stay among them?"
"My dear man, just because they are. It makes me hate them so."
"Hate them? I thought you liked them."
"Don't be stupid. What I 'like' is just to loathe them. You wouldn't
believe what passes before my eyes."
"Then why have you never told me? You didn't mention anything before I
left."
"Oh I hadn't got round to it then. It's the sort of thing you don't
believe at first; you have to look round you a bit and then you
understand. You work into it more and more. Besides," the girl went on,
"this is the time of the year when the worst lot come up. They're simply
packed together in those smart streets. Talk of the numbers
of the poor!
What
I can vouch for is the numbers of the rich! There are new ones
every day, and they seem to get richer and richer. Oh, they do come up!"
she cried, imitating for her private recreation--she was sure it wouldn't
reach Mr. Mudge--the low intonation of the counter-clerk.
"And where do they come from?" her companion candidly enquired.
She had to think a moment; then she found something. "From the 'spring
meetings.' They bet tremendously."
"Well, they bet enough at Chalk Farm, if that's all."
"It isn't all. It isn't a millionth part!" she replied with some
sharpness. "It's immense fun"--she had to tantalise him. Then as she
had heard Mrs. Jordan say, and as the ladies at Cocker's even sometimes
wired, "It's quite too dreadful!" She could fully feel how it was Mr.
Mudge's propriety, which was extreme--he had a horror of coarseness and
attended a Wesleyan chapel--that prevented his asking for details. But
she gave
him some of the more innocuous in spite of himself, especially
putting before him how, at Simpkin's and Ladle's, they all made the money
fly. That was indeed what he liked to hear: the connexion was not
direct, but one was somehow more in the right place where the money was
flying than where it was simply and meagrely nesting. The air felt that
stir, he had to acknowledge, much less at Chalk Farm than in the district
in which his beloved so oddly enjoyed her footing. She gave him, she
could see, a restless sense that these might be familiarities not to be
sacrificed; germs, possibilities, faint foreshowings--heaven knew what--of
the initiation it would prove profitable to have arrived at when in the
fulness of time he should have his own shop in some such paradise. What
really touched him--that was discernible--was that she could feed him
with so much mere vividness of reminder, keep before him, as by the play
of a fan, the very wind of the swift bank-notes and the charm of the
existence of a class that Providence
had raised up to be the blessing of
grocers. He liked to think that the class was there, that it was always
there, and that she contributed in her slight but appreciable degree to
keep it up to the mark. He couldn't have formulated his theory of the
matter, but the exuberance of the aristocracy was the advantage of trade,
and everything was knit together in a richness of pattern that it was
good to follow with one's finger-tips. It was a comfort to him to be
thus assured that there were no symptoms of a drop. What did the
sounder, as she called it, nimbly worked, do but keep the ball going?
What it came to therefore for Mr. Mudge was that all enjoyments were, as
might be said, inter-related, and that the more people had the more they
wanted to have. The more flirtations, as he might roughly express it,
the more cheese and pickles. He had even in his own small way been dimly
struck with the linked sweetness connecting the tender passion with cheap
champagne. What he would have
liked to
say had he been able to work out his thought to the end was: "I see, I
see. Lash them up then, lead them on, keep them going: some of it can't
help, some time, coming
our way." Yet he was troubled by the suspicion
of subtleties on his companion's part that spoiled the straight view. He
couldn't understand people's hating what they liked or liking what they
hated; above all it hurt him somewhere--for he had his private
delicacies--to see anything
but money made out of his betters. To be
too enquiring, or in any other way too free, at the expense of the gentry
was vaguely wrong; the only thing that was distinctly right was to be
prosperous at any price. Wasn't it just because they were up there aloft
that they were lucrative? He concluded at any rate by saying to his
young friend: "If it's improper for you to remain at Cocker's, then that
falls in exactly with the other reasons I've put before you for your
removal."
"Improper?"--her smile became a prolonged boldness. "My dear boy,
there's no one like you!"
"I dare say," he laughed; "but that doesn't help the question."
"Well," she returned, "I can't give up my friends. I'm making even more
than Mrs. Jordan."
Mr. Mudge considered. "How much is she making?"
"Oh you dear donkey!"--and, regardless of all the Regent's Park, she
patted his cheek. This was the sort of moment at which she was
absolutely tempted to tell him that she liked to be near Park Chambers.
There was a fascination in the idea of seeing if, on a mention of Captain
Everard, he wouldn't do what she thought he might; wouldn't weigh against
the obvious objection the still more obvious advantage. The advantage of
course could only strike him at the best as rather fantastic; but it was
always to the good to keep hold when you had hold, and such an attitude
would also after all involve a high tribute to her fidelity. Of one
thing she absolutely never doubted: Mr. Mudge believed in her with a
belief--! She believed in herself too, for that matter: if there was a
thing in the world no one could charge her with it was being the kind of
low barmaid person who rinsed tumblers and bandied slang. But she
forbore as yet to speak; she had not spoken even to Mrs. Jordan; and the
hush that on her lips surrounded the Captain's name maintained itself as
a kind of symbol of the success that, up to this time, had attended
something or other--she couldn't have said what--that she humoured
herself with calling, without words, her relation with him.