Chapter XXV: Johnny at Home

Away with wooer’s gallivanting, and all the soft and sugary stuff of dreams. A sterner wind than Zephyr speeds me on my way, and lands me, hard of purpose, in the midst of London, and blows me with a crack up against Johnny’s door. He is established for the time being, with his mother, in a luxurious flat in Victoria Street, and the round red-glass stove in his hall is not more glowing with a warmth of welcome than is the face with which he greets me.

“I say, Dick,” he says presently, “who spoke of fairies?”

“Not I, Johnny.”

“Didn’t you? I say, how’s Miss Christmas, Dick?”

“She is very well, Johnny; she and I are engaged to be married.”

I would not appeal to his generosity--of that I had been determined--through any shadow of misunderstanding. He bore the blow like a Briton, a little huskily, with a little affectation, in the first of the shock, of bending down to tie his shoe.

“O!” he said, rising apoplectic, and with a quivering lip. “I’m sure I give you joy, old boy. I could never quite believe, you know, in your indifference. Who could, with such a prize before him? It’s all in the right order of things, you know; like--like the _honi soit_, and _quis separabit_ and the rest of them. I hope Lord Skene approves?”

“Not he.”

“Then he’s no gentleman.”

“He’s no fool, perhaps. Johnny, I’ve come primed with an enormous budget of news to explode on you.”

“Explode away, then.”

Whether it was the sobering effect of my first astounding stroke, or the absence of emotional distractions, I don’t know; but he received my story from beginning to end this time with a grasp and understanding that were positively pathetic.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, when I had reached a finish. “You must come with me to-morrow and see Shapter. He’s our family solicitor, and as sharp as flints. This thing’s got beyond the private and personal note--don’t you agree with me?”

“I’m afraid I must, Johnny.”

“Now, look here, Dicky; you’re giving me my first chance at what I have always pined for and never had the luck nor the figure to get--a personal part in a real, picturesque, mystery-and-murder romance. I’m not going to be excused out of it, nor forbidden to engineer it as lavish as I please. It’s the great opportunity of my life, and I shall take it unkind if you refuse me a free hand to work it. You’re not to have a share at all in the financing of the venture--you understand that. If I allowed you one, it would rub all the gilt off my own make-believe.”

I understood him, and his fine delicacy. This was his way of assuring me the practical help which I could not but need.

“Put it as you like, Johnny,” I said. “You’re a dear good fellow every way.”

“Very well,” he answered; “that’s understood. Shapter will stage-manage the thing, and all we’ve got to do is to dress up and play our parts like professionals. My eye! I hope there’s a coronet among the properties. You see, it’s got to the point when, in my opinion, a reputable independent witness is not only wanted, but indispensable. You can’t run this any longer on your own responsibility--you might get into no end of scrapes; and, as to me, why, I haven’t shown any partic’lar gift for doing the detective, have I?”

“You betray a tendency, perhaps, Johnny, to jump too hastily to conclusions.”

“Ah! you may go into fits, if you like. I had my turn of ’em with Drysalter. My word he _was_ a pepper-castor! I say, Dick----”

“Yes, Johnny?”

“You’re quite sure you and Miss Christmas are engaged?”

“Perfectly certain, Johnny.”

“You ain’t by chance thinking of anybody else, similar sort of name, are you?”

“No; there’s no mistake about it.”

“Ah!”

He pondered a little, sombrely.

“Did she know you were coming here, to see me?” he asked presently.

“Yes, I told her. Perhaps you would like to know what she remarked upon it.”

“Shouldn’t I!”

“She said, ‘I’m sure, for my sake, Richard, he’ll take care of you.’”

“_Did_ she say that, Dick--_did_ she?”

“Her very words, old fellow.”

“By George! tell her I’ll never let you out of my sight until it’s to give you back to her.”

He got up in some emotion, and walked to the window. If in all that hurrying panorama beneath his eyes, that endless procession of shapes and shadows all set on overtaking and outstripping one another in the race for wealth, there was moving onward one only other soul as disinterestedly intent as he on a brother’s welfare, the old dark city, I am sure, might yet boast of the seed of promise in its veins.

I dined at the flat that evening. I was not introduced to Johnny’s mamma until, having entered the banqueting-hall, my attention was called to an extraordinary old lady seated already at the head of the table in a wheel-chair in the nature of a portable throne. She was enormously squat and fat, like a loaf, and her head, I fear, bore no more testimony to the efficacy of “Grafto” than had the late lamented analyst’s. The pile on it, nominally golden, but of a hue that never was on sea or land, was so glaringly, even so loosely adjusted, that, if she had turned a great bird’s nest upside down on her head, the deception could not have been more flagrant. It’s size and precariousness so engrossed my attention, that once, when a blundering footman knocked it crooked with a plate, and she said placidly, “You nearly upset my hair, Richard!” I felt as if the rebuke were personal to myself, and blushed over the involuntary movement I had made to catch it before it fell into the soup. The man put it straight like a dish cover, without his mistress, or himself, or anybody else exhibiting the least disturbance; and then I comprehended upon what purely undissembling terms the article stood, and felt that one could no more quarrel with it on the score of mendacity than with a bonnet.

I have never seen a mass of woman so complacent and imperturbable. She sat basking in speechless comfort, and only emitted, at intervals and at large, rich oracular remarks about the food. These might be understood to owe their provocation either to the nice constitution of some particular dish, or dishes, or to one’s unappreciative attitude towards such in their passing. Thus, the dictum “The leg of a pheasant and the wing of a grouse,” pronounced significantly during the game course, may have been interpretable into a general proposition of fitness or a personal admonition--there was no telling from the expression of the speaker, because she was absolutely without any, nor from the direction of her eyes, which she could only move by moving her whole body with them, a process much too laborious for the occasion. I could never get rid, however, of an uncomfortable feeling that there was something in these utterances aimed aggressively at myself and my gastronomic perversity, as when, as if in correction of some spirit of contradictoriness observed in me, she suddenly decreed, “Fry bread-crumbs in butter, but sippets in dripping,” or appeared, when I was in the very act of helping myself from a particular dish, to throw an unfounded aspersion upon my age by asserting with finality, “Crack no nuts at all, if you can’t crack ’em with your teeth.”

Her last remark but one occurred at dessert, when she suddenly asseverated, without looking at anything, “The late Prince Consort always ate his orange with a spoon,” a statement which caused me blushingly to lay down my knife and fork. And finally, having eaten a stupendous dinner, with the large unimpassioned confidence of one who had never yet been mistaken in her digestion, with the observation on her lips that “The late Duke of Wellington used to remark that when it’s time to turn over it’s time to turn out,” she was wheeled from the room by the man called Richard, and disappeared from my ken for ever.

But Johnny (who, by the way, wore a white waistcoat, with real turquoise buttons), put my inward sniggering all to shame by his perfectly natural acceptance of this remarkable parent. He was dutiful, and attentive, and always respectful in his attitude towards her--unconscious of any reason, indeed, why she should figure as something slightly abnormal to alien eyes. It had occurred to me, irresistibly but abominably, how Ira would have regarded such a mother-in-law. Now, hearing the good fellow expatiating on his mamma’s generosity and loving-kindness, I was ashamed of myself and joined warmly in the eulogium.

These two lived in the lap of wealth. The whole flat was alive with gorgeous, soft-stepping flunkeys, whose plush breeches took the doorways with beauty. Mrs Dando herself, for all her bulk, had been caked with diamonds. Yet, I believe, the enormous residuum of that wealth, when the price of its ostentation was deducted, was devoted almost exclusively to good works. Which of us, humbler endowed, could make the same boast relatively? Certainly I had no reason to criticise a display, whose moral, as it affected me alone, was all of a delicate helpfulness and generosity.

Johnny and I sat up pretty late together, discussing my affairs; and when I left my friend, to return to the modest quarters where I had left Geoletti awaiting me, it was only to breach, by a little interval of sleep, the business on whose full tide his wealth, and help, and devotion were to launch me.

At eleven o’clock on the following morning I went to my appointment, accompanied by the Italian. Mr Shapter’s offices were in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; and it gave me my first real inkling, perhaps, of the worldly consequence of my little half-condescended-to old schoolfellow, when I observed with what deference, and with what disregard of the prior claims of lesser waiting clients, he was ushered into the great man’s presence.

I am not going to detail the processes of the interview which followed. It would be merely to retread well-trodden ground. My story and Geoletti’s were heard, and balanced, and compared, and the right inferences drawn from them, with an insight and acumen which gave me a high opinion of the qualities upon which great legal reputations are based. The conclusion is the essential thing, and that is related in a line. It was to be Mother Carey first; and, after her, Aosta and Lapluietonnante.