第43章

"Sure,I forgot to tell you I'm a father again;father number nine,unless I've lost count.Sure your friend will join us in a glass to wet the head of the baby?"He filled three glasses as he spoke,and winked at Mrs Herring.Ada's brain was in a whirl.She saw that she had been trapped,and that Mrs Herring was a liar and a comedian.She might as well drink now she was here.But Jonah would kill her,if he smelt drink on her.Well,let him!It was little enough fun she got out of life anyhow.She nodded to Cassidy.They clinked the three glasses and drank,the landlord and Mrs Herring at a gulp,Ada with tiny sips as if it were poison.

"Well,I'll leave you to your bit of gossip;I think I hear the child crying,"said the landlord,backing out of the door with a grin.

Mrs Herring,who had forgotten her palpitations,filled her glass again,and sipped slowly to keep Ada company.In half an hour Ada finished her second glass.A pleasant glow had spread through her body.The weight was lifted off her mind,and she felt calm and happy.She thought of Jonah with indifference.What did he matter?She listened cheerfully to Mrs Herring's ceaseless whisper,only catching the meaning of one word in ten.

"And many's the time,when my poor dear husband was alive,have I gone out meaning to throw myself into the harbour,and a drop of cordial has changed my mind."Ada nodded to show that she understood that the late Mr Herring was a brute and a tyrant.

"And then he went with the contingent to South Africa,and the next Iheard was that he was dead.And the thought of my poor dear lying with his face turned to the skies would have driven me mad,if the doctor hadn't insisted on my taking a drop of cordial to bear my grief.And when I recovered,I vowed I would never marry again.The men dearie,are all alike.They marry one woman,and want twenty.And if you as much as look at another man,they smash the furniture and threaten to get a divorce.

I can see you've found that out."

"Ye're barkin'up the wrong tree,"said Ada."My old man's as 'ard as nails,but 'e don't run after women.'E's the wrong shape,see."Ada had never spent such a pleasant time in her life.She had never tasted brandy till that afternoon.Cardigan Street drank beer,and the glasses Ada had drunk at odd times had only made her sleepy without excitement.But this seductive liquid leapt through her veins,bringing a delicious languor and a sense of comfort.Her mind,dull and heavy by habit,ran on wheels.She wanted to interrupt Mrs Herring to make some observations of her own which seemed too good to lose.She felt a silly impulse to ask her whether she was born with a moustache,who taught her to shave,whether she could grow a moustache if she left it alone.She wanted to ask why her palpitations had gone off so quickly,and why she seemed perfectly at home in the "Angel",but her thoughts crowded heel on heel so fast that she had forgotten them before she could speak.

She remembered that a few weeks ago the housekeeper's husband had died of typhoid in the Never Never country,and Mrs Herring had nursed him bravely to the end.She tried to reconcile this with his death this afternoon in the Boer War,and decided that it didn't matter.He must have died somewhere,for no one had ever seen him.She was discovering slowly that this woman was a consummate liar,who lied as the birds sing,but forgot her many inventions,a born liar without a memory.Suddenly Mrs Herring said she must be going,and Ada got up to leave.She lurched as she stood,and pushed her chair over with a clumsy movement.

"I b'lieve I'm drunk,"she muttered,with a foolish titter.

Mrs PARTRIDGE LENDS A HAND

Since ten o'clock in the morning the large house,standing in its own grounds,had been invaded by a swarm of dealers,hook-nosed and ferret-eyed,prying into every corner,searching each lot for hidden faults,judging at a glance the actual value of every piece of furniture,their blood stirred with the hereditary joy in chaffering,for an auction is as full of surprises as a battle,the prices rising and falling according to the temper of the crowd.And they watched one another with crafty eyes that had long lost the power to see anything but the faults and defects in the property of others.Those who had commissions from buyers marked the chosen lots in their catalogue with a stumpy pencil.

Mother Jenkins was one of these.She was the auctioneer's scavenger,snapping up the dishonoured,broken remnants disdained by the others,buying for a song the job lots on the way to the rubbish-heap.All was fish that came to her net,for her second-hand shop in Bathurst Street had taught her to despise nothing that had an ounce of wear left in it.

Her bids never ran beyond a few shillings,but to-day she had an important commission,twenty pounds to lay out on the furnishing of three rooms for a married couple.These were her windfalls.Sometimes she got a wedding order,and furnished the house out of her amazing collection,supplemented by her bargains at the next auction sale.This had brought her to the sale early,for the young couple,deciding to furnish in style,had exhausted her resources by demanding wardrobes,dressing-tables,and washstands with marble tops.

The young woman with the mop of red hair followed on her heels,amazed by the luxury of the interior harmonized in a scheme of colour.Her day-dreams,coloured by the deions of ducal mansions in penny novelettes,came suddenly true.And she lingered before carved cabinets,strange vases like frozen rainbows,and Oriental tapestry with the instinctive delight in luxury planted in women.