Payment Deferred · Chapter 1 (2/3)

For a moment the conversation flagged, and the boy, still a little shy, had leisure to look about him. These were the only relatives he had on earth, and he would like to make the most of them, although, he confessed to himself, he was not greatly attracted at first sight. The room was frankly hideous. The flowered wallpaper was covered with photographs and with the worst kind of engravings. The spurious marble mantelpiece was littered with horrible vases. Of the two armchairs one was covered with plush, the other with a chintz that blended unhappily with the wallpaper. The other chairs were plain bentwood ones. On a table in the window were dusty aspidistras in vast green china pots. In the armchair opposite him sat his uncle, in a shabby blue suit flagrantly spotted here and there. He was a small man, with sparse reddish hair and a bristling moustache of the same colour. His weak grey eyes bore a worried expression⁠—more worried even than the expression he had already noticed in the eyes of the tired men who had sat opposite him in the bus which had brought him here. He had a silver watchchain across his rumpled waistcoat, and on his feet were shapeless carpet slippers, above which showed heather mixture socks sagging garterless round his ankles. Beside him, uncomplaining and uncomfortable on one of the bentwood chairs, sat his wife, frail, pale and shabby; the most noticeable thing about her was her lopsided steel rimmed spectacles. The children were only visible to him when he turned his head uncomfortably. They certainly were more attractive. The little girl, Winnie, bore in her sharp features undeniable promise of good looks, as she sat with her hands in her lap beside the table, and the boy⁠—John, wasn’t he?⁠—was quite a fair specimen of the fourteen-year-old. Nevertheless, young Medland did not feel at all at ease in his present situation. Six weeks on board a first-class liner, the only male passenger unmarried between the ages of fifteen and fifty is not the best introduction to the life of a poverty-stricken suburban home. Medland felt the sudden need to think about something else.

“May I smoke?” he asked.

“Why, yes, of course,” said Mr. Marble, rousing himself suddenly to his hospitable duties.

Mr. Marble plunged into his pocket in search of the battered yellow packet of cigarettes that lay there. It held three cigarettes, he knew, and he had been treasuring them to smoke himself later in the evening. He spent as long as he could before producing them, and he was successful in his tactics. Medland already had produced his case and was offering it to him.

It was a leather case, the parting gift of one of the middle-aged women on the boat. Women never realize that a leather case spoils cigarettes. But this was far more than a cigarette case. It was a substantial wallet, with pockets for stamps and visiting cards, and at the back, sagging open in consequence of the way in which Medland held it, was a compartment for money. And this was full. Marble noticed, as the case was tendered to him, a thick fold of Treasury notes, twenty pounds at least, maybe thirty, decided Marble, gauging it with a bank clerk’s eye. Beside it was another fold of banknotes⁠—five pound notes, most probably. The sight positively dazzled poor Mr. Marble’s vision. And it brought, too, a ray of hope into the grim cells of dumb despair in his soul. It was more than flesh and blood could bear not to remark on it.

“That’s a nice case,” said Mr. Marble, tendering a lighted match to his guest.

“Yes.” Medland drew on his cigarette to make sure it was well lighted. “It was a present,” he added modestly, and he held it out so that his uncle could see it more freely.

The banknotes flashed once more before Marble’s tortured eyes.

“Well lined too,” said Marble, striving to keep the envy out of his tone.

“Yes, I got them at Port Said⁠—oh, you mean the notes?” Medland did his best not to show surprise at his uncle’s bad taste. To assist in this he went into even further explanation. “I had to cash one of my letters of credit as soon as I got to London. The voyage left me without a bean, pretty nearly, and what I had was Australian money, of course.”

It was an idle enough speech, but it sufficed to set Mr. Marble thinking rapidly and unsteadily. This boy had arrived just in time to save him. He surely would not deny his newfound uncle a loan? Those Treasury notes would save him, let alone the banknotes. And a loan from a nephew was not the same thing at all as a debt to that devil Evans, who would be putting the bailiffs in directly. It was not even in the same class as a debt to those men at the office, to repay whom only enough to keep them from complaining to higher officials had absorbed all his month’s salary. On the heels of these thoughts came appalling realization of the peril of his position. It was the third of the month only, and he had ten shillings in the world with which to stave off his creditors and to support his family until his next payday. Before this he had shut his eyes to the position with all the small resolution he possessed. But now that there was a chance of escape the danger in which he stood was forced home upon him, making him shudder involuntarily a little and setting his heart thumping heavily in his chest. Mechanically he glanced across at the sideboard in which was the decanter. But he checked himself. He was not going to have to waste one of his last three⁠—or was it four?⁠—drinks on this boy. He thrust the thought of the whisky fiercely on one side and turned to making cautious advances towards the nephew.

“Did you have much difficulty in finding your way here?” he asked⁠—the inevitable question always addressed to the newcomer to the suburbs.

“Oh, no,” replied Medland. “I had your address, of course, mother dug it up from your old letters before she died. So I knew it was Dulwich, and in Trafalgar Square I saw dozens of buses all going to Dulwich, and I got on one and came as far as the terminus. Then it was easy. The first person I asked told me the way to Malcolm Road.”

“Just so. And where did you say you were staying?”

Medland had not said he was staying anywhere, but he told him. It was a substantial Strand hotel. It was then that Medland, apropos of this, made the remark that was to alter everything.

“It’s funny to think of,” he said, striving to keep the conversation going, “but besides you there isn’t a soul in England who knows anything about me. I don’t think I was in the hotel more than an hour, and I only left my hand luggage there. The rest of my stuff is at Euston. What with going to the Bank and so on I simply didn’t have time to collect it, even if it had got there. I was thinking to myself as I came here that if I got lost and never found my way back no one would mind at all⁠—except you, of course.”

“H’m!” said Mr. Marble, and another train of thought came to him on the instant, and he shuddered again.

Medland’s shyness was turning to boyish talkativeness. He looked round to the two children.

“Well,” he said, and smiled, “you two don’t seem to have much to say for yourselves.”

Winnie and John still remained silent. They had been keeping as quiet as mice so as not to draw attention to themselves and raise again the postponed question of bed. But beside this John was lost in admiration of this weather-tanned man who had come all the way from Australia, and who treated such an amazing trip through pirate-haunted seas with so little concern that he had said no word about it. And he spoke so casually about hotels too. John had noticed last year at Worthing that his father spoke of people who lived in hotels as opposed to those who live in rooms, and even in boardinghouses, with awe in his voice. And this man lived in a hotel and thought nothing of it!

As for Winnie, she was thinking that he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. His warm brown face and his brown tweeds with their intoxicating scent were wonderful. Then when he looked straight at you and smiled, as he had just done, he was handsomer than anyone she could imagine, far handsomer than the fairy prince in the pantomime at Christmas.

“Speak up, children,” said their father. To Medland’s fastidious ear it sounded as if he might have added, “Tell the pretty gentleman his fortune.”

The children grinned shyly. Winnie could say nothing. But John made an effort, unused as he was to conversation owing to severe repression by his father during his queer moods of late.

“You have kangaroos in Australia, haven’t you?” he said, with a fourteen-year-old wriggle.

“You’re right,” said Medland. “I’ve hunted them too.”

“Ooh,” gasped John ecstatically. “On horseback?”

“Yes, for miles and miles across the country, as fast as your horse could gallop. I’ll tell you about it some day.”

Both children writhed in delight.

“And bushrangers?” said John. “Did⁠—did you ever see Ned Kelly?”

To Medland’s credit he did not laugh.

“No such luck,” he said. “There weren’t many round where I lived. But I know a topping book about them.”

“Robbery Under Arms,” said both children at once.

“Oh, you’ve read it?”

“Read it? I should think they had.” This was Mr. Marble’s contribution to the conversation. “They’re terrors for reading, those two kids are. Never see ’em without a book.”

“That’s fine,” said Medland.

But the conversation wilted beyond recovery at this intrusion. And Marble, intent on getting Medland to himself, flashed a look at the children and jerked his head skywards. They understood, and climbed down dolefully from their chairs.

“Bedtime, children?” said Mr. Marble in a tone of surprise that was unsuccessful in its purpose of deceiving Medland, since he had caught the tail end of Marble’s signal. “Good night, then. Why, aren’t you going to kiss me?”

They had not been intending to do so. The custom had died out months before, when Marble had begun turning to the decanter in the sideboard for distraction from his troubles, and with children a custom three months unused might as well never have existed. Besides, John was nearly too old for kissing now. Both John and Winnie kissed their father awkwardly, and their mother casually. Then John shook hands with his new cousin. It was the first time he had ever shaken hands as man to man, with eye meeting eye in man’s fashion, and he was very proud of it. Winnie, too, tried to shake hands in imitation of her brother, but there was something in Medland’s smile and in the gentle traction he exerted on her hand that made her lean forward and kiss the boyish mouth tendered to her. It felt funny, different from other kisses she had known. It was a very silent pair that went up to bed.

Marble turned away with evident relief as they closed the door.

“Now we can be comfortable,” he said. “Draw your chair up closer to the fire, er⁠—Jim. What a night,” he added, as the wind howled outside.

Medland nodded moodily. He was feeling awkward. He was not at all at home with these strange people. He didn’t like the way Marble behaved towards his children. The kids were all right of course, and the mother was a nonentity. But there was an atmosphere about the place that he hated. He pulled himself together and tried to shake off the brooding premonitory mood that was oppressing him. It was absurd, of course. Old Marble was only a very ordinary sort of chap. Seedy and down at heel, but quite all right. He was smiling oilily at present, but that didn’t mean anything necessarily. Hang it all, if he didn’t like the place he could clear out in a few minutes’ time and never come back to it. For the matter of that Medland’s thoughts swerved suddenly to the utterly absurd⁠—he could change his hotel next morning and then they could never find him again. The bare idea was sufficient to bring his mind back to reality. There was no reason why he should think about things like that at all. The kids were fine, and he’d see a lot of them while he was in England. He could take them to a lot of the places he felt he had to go to, the Tower of London and St. Paul’s, for instance. That would be topping.

Mr. Marble was speaking to his wife.

“What about some supper, Annie?” he was saying. “I expect our young friend here is hungry.”

“But⁠—” began Mrs. Marble hopelessly, and then checked herself hastily and clumsily as she caught sight of her husband frowning at her.

“Don’t worry about me, please,” put in Medland. “I dined just before I came out.”

“That’s all right, then,” replied Marble. “I dined just after I came in.”

And he laughed. The laughter was just the least bit strained.

Conversation began again, resuming its hopeless, desultory way while Medland wondered in a bored, young man’s fashion why on earth he did not get up and go at once. There were really several reasons. One was that the wind and the rain were continually making themselves heard outside; another was that the fire was most attractive⁠—it was the most attractive thing in the whole house⁠—but deep down there was a feeling of relief that he was not in a hotel with nothing special to do. Medland had laid plans for a very exciting time on his arrival in England, but at the moment he was feeling a little homesick and not in the mood for excitement of any kind. It might have been as well if he had felt otherwise.

Mrs. Marble came into the picture at times. She asked him homely questions as to whether he was seasick on the voyage, and whether he had enough to eat, and whether he was warmly enough clad to face an English winter. Medland answered politely enough, but Marble was positively rude to her on more than one occasion. Medland found himself regarding the little man curiously. His face was a little moist, and his eyes were brighter than they had been before, as though he was growing excited about something of which the others knew nothing. He cut his wife short repeatedly, and his questions grew more and more personal. Medland realized that to a person of Marble’s character the idea of conversation would consist of a series of questions, but even that was no excuse for this searching cross-examination as to his resources, his friends and his knowledge of affairs.

Poor Marble! And poor Medland! Marble was being affected more and more by the realization of his position, rendered more acute by envious contrast with Medland’s, while Medland’s every answer seemed calculated to urge Marble on to⁠—something. Marble was not quite sure what it was. It could not just be borrowing money; he had decided to attempt that hours ago. The thumping heart within him seemed to indicate something more unusual than that. Marble was nerving himself to definite action⁠—for the first time in his life, be it added.

With the cunning of the weak, he did his best to disguise the state he was in, while all the time, without conscious volition on his part, his furtive mind was twisting and turning, devising the course of action he was likely to take. No wonder Medland looked at him oddly at times.

Time seemed to be passing with extraordinary rapidity. It seemed to Marble that every time he looked at the clock on the mantelpiece another half-hour had fled. Twice had he detected in Medland’s manner an intention of leaving as soon as the conversation broke, and each time he had flung himself into the breach, talking nonsense, as he was painfully aware, in order to stave off the crisis that would arise when that time came.

His fevered mind roused itself to additional activity. He nerved himself to make the sacrifice which he realized was inevitable, and gathered himself together in his chair as casually as he could manage.

“What about a drink?” he asked. In such a matter-of-fact way did he bring the question out that Medland did not guess the wrench it cost him.