The Princess Galva

The waning light of an October evening shone on the reflectors outside the windows of the basement counting-house, and the clerk at the corner desk could barely discern that the clock on the green painted dusty wall pointed to a quarter to six.

In fifteen minutes Edward Povey's twenty-two years of devoted service in the interests of Messrs. Kyser, Schultz & Company would come to an end, and the desk in the corner to which he had been promoted fifteen years ago would by the immutable law of evolution pass into the possession of his junior. Edward noticed this junior now and the glances which that young man cast at the scratched and ink-stained slab of mahogany that was to constitute his kingdom of the morrow. Edward wondered dully whether the young man was as full of hope as he himself had been. Perhaps he was waiting to be married even as he, Edward, had waited fifteen years ago. In those days the era of the Young Man had not been so pronounced as it is to-day, and it had been death that had removed his predecessor.

Even now he could remember the chastened sorrow with which he mounted the high stool of his desire. He had propped open the desk and collected together the belongings of the deceased clerk, and posted them with a little note of sympathy to his widow. Some had seemed too trivial to send, and of these a few still remained, a battered soap-box, a small square of unframed looking-glass, its red back scratched and scored. These, together with the great ebony ruler, had now outlasted his own reign and would pass to the new-comer.

And now the desk was propped open again, and it was his own belongings that he was collecting into a heap. The well-known odour of the wood came to his nostrils and he sighed a little. From shadowy and dusty corners he got together the little trifles that had been part and parcel of his life and arranged them in a neat pile beside him.

"If there's anything I can do for you--" began the junior, brushing his hair in front of a little mirror and settling his purple tie nervously.

"No, Joynings; nothing, I thank you. I'm leaving you old Brown's looking-glass and soap-box-they're fixtures, and go with the position."

The junior tittered a little at this and pulled down the front of his fancy waistcoat, lit a cigarette, and took a pair of roller-skates from the drawer of his desk. He came over and held out his hand.

"Right, then I'll be popping along-good luck, old man, and all that. You'll drop into something soon. If I hear of anything--"

"Oh, I'll be all right," said Edward Povey.

There is always a certain fascination in change and elation in abnormal conditions, even if those conditions constitute a misfortune. Edward Povey was surprised at his inner feelings as he left the portals of Messrs. Kyser, Schultz & Company's offices. In his own mind he knew that he ought to be feeling depressed; but the fact remained that he was feeling nothing of the kind, indeed he felt happier than he had done for the past twenty-two years, except perhaps on that one evening fifteen years ago. Then he had been hurrying out to a small house in a mean street in Barnsbury, to a little woman who was waiting for the news that would enable her to become the wife of the man who brought it. Now he was going to another little house in a mean street, in Clapham this time, to the same woman, but with how different tidings and how differently they would be received. Fifteen years ago the future had looked very bright to the limited vision of Mr. Edward Povey. He had left the office after his marriage with a light step and hurried across the bridge that would lead him to the villa he had taken. As the years passed, the light step had become a sedate walk, and now it was hard to recognize in the little bowed figure that shuffled each evening across London Bridge the Edward Povey of other days.

But to-night, curiously enough, the step was not shuffling and the little iron-grey head was more erect. The blow that had fallen when Mr. Schultz had given him the buff envelope which contained his salary and his congé had been deadening, and the feeling had numbed him for the whole day. Then had come the inevitable reaction, the need for movement, for effort, and the heart of Edward Povey was responding nobly to the call, the heart that had lain dormant since the early days of his marriage.

For Charlotte Povey, estimable woman, cherished fondly the idea that for fifteen years she had been moulding the life, the destinies, and the character of her husband, and he, for the sake of peace, had given himself unresistingly to the potter's thumb. Charlotte's method, however, left much to be desired. With the laudable object of rousing the soul of Edward to further action and endeavour, she let not a day pass without comparing, much to his disparagement, his actions and even his appearance with other men of their acquaintance.

But instead of this having the desired effect, Edward had gradually come to believe it all; it had been so consistently impressed upon him that he was a poor sort of a chap anyway, and the inevitable result was-the envelope presented to him that morning by Mr. Schultz.

And now, on this calm autumn evening the chains of fifteen years fell from him and the spirit of Edward Povey underwent a change. He began to think that it was a good, full world-a world in which there were more things and higher possibilities than the evil-smelling counting-house of Kyser, Schultz & Company. He told himself that he had wasted nearly a quarter of a century.

The city was settling to quietude under a pall of smoky opal. The warehouses and buildings stood out gaunt and grey. The river flowing under the railway arches up-stream was splashed with the glory of the setting sun, little elusive reflections showing blood-red on the muddy water. Edward had crossed London Bridge for many years, but he did not remember ever having seen a sunset there.

Clapham! The world was bigger than Clapham.-Forty years of age! Why, it was the prime of a man's life, rather before the prime, in fact. Edward stopped, there was no hurry to-night, and leant over the parapet of the bridge. Below him, on the wharf, they were unloading a tramp steamer of boxes of fruit. The men swarming like ants up the long gangways were carrying on their backs light crates. One of these boxes had come apart and lay on the grimy deck shedding a little pool of golden oranges. The clatter of winches, the jangling of cranes, all served to make up a picture of life and movement that appealed strongly to the man who was leaning over the stone balustrade. He could read the name on the stern of the boat, "Isabella-Barcelona."

There were other boats too, and barges, huddling together as though for warmth like little chickens in an incubator. The bascules of the Tower Bridge, showing dimly in the haze, were being raised to let a white-funneled steamer that was cautiously sidling out into mid-stream slip down to the sea. Two men were working vigorously with long poles, guiding a barge laden with straw out of her way. Edward Povey watched her, telling himself that in a few hours she would be making her way down Channel or breasting the waves in the North Sea. Later she would be in some palm-fringed Southern port, or perhaps amid the romantic islands and fjords of the North.

He wished that he, too, could go abroad, that he too could slide out of London on the dingy bosom of Father Thames. He longed to breathe the large airs of the ocean, to feel the sting of the salt spray, and to reach the places blazoned so bravely forth in gold letters upon the sterns below him. Barcelona, for instance, spoke of sunny skies and indolence and romance, and he felt a great pity for the surging masses of which he had so lately been one, who pushed past him with never a glance for the river or the sunset, or for the Isabella from Barcelona.

A light tap on his shoulder brought him out of his reverie, to see the genial face of Mr. Kyser, the other partner of the firm to whom he had been correspondence clerk for so many years. Edward had never had much to do with the junior partner, but what small relations they had had seemed to be touched with more humanity than was the case with Mr. Schultz.

"--and so you are leaving us, Mr. Povey?" Kyser was saying.

"Yes, sir, I--"

"Well, Povey, I'm sorry, yes, I'm sorry; but there, I can't interfere with what Mr. Schultz does, it's his department, you know, but I didn't want to pass you without a handshake. Let me see, you live at Clapham, don't you?"

Edward Povey nodded.

"We'll get a taxi, then-or, better still, come and have a chop with me-I want a word with you."

Edward was delighted. Surely things were far better than they had been for a quarter of a century. Yesterday this same man would have passed him with perhaps a nod, perhaps not even that.

The change that had come over Edward since his release from bondage was evidently being sustained by events. For fifteen years he had passed the spacious grill-room in Gracechurch Street, with its noble array of chops and parsley in the window, in which he now found himself, on his way to the little eating-house up the court where he had taken his modest midday meal of sandwiches and stout. There was a sense of well-being about his present surroundings that gave him a feeling as though he had set foot in a new world and that he meant to remain in it. The snowy linen, the silver and glass, the little green-curtained alcoves, the obsequious waiters, the flickering and hissing of the grill at the further end of the room, presided over by the white-clad chef, all played their part in the awakening of Edward Povey.

"It's not much that I wanted to speak to you about, Povey, but I thought you might help me. You'll be looking round for another place, I suppose, but if you can find time to run out to Bushey now and again, you'll be obliging me-personally."

Edward Povey expressed his willingness to do all that lay in his power.

"It's only to have a look at my little cottage there, Povey; I've been living there on and off, and now I'm off to Switzerland. My man goes with me, so I want you to run out and see that things are all right. I'll give you the key. Any letters that come you can keep for me until my return. I've got a few decent pictures at the cottage and some old silver that I'm anxious not to leave altogether unattended. Can I count on you?"

Edward repeated his assurances, but a sense of disappointment had come over him as Kyser had been speaking. The adventure was not panning out as he had hoped. At the same time, he told himself that he would be paid for his services, perhaps liberally, and it might prevent him having to touch the little nest-egg in the Post Office Savings Bank.

When Edward parted with his late employer and left the grill-room it was with the key of Adderbury Cottage, Bushey Heath, in his pocket, and rather a feeling of resentment against Mr. Kyser and his firm, who did not hesitate to use a servant of twenty-two years' standing as a mere caretaker.

And resentment was a dangerous thing in the brain of the new Edward Povey.

It was nine o'clock when Edward Povey pushed open the little iron gate of No. 8, Belitha Villas, Clapham, thereby announcing his return to the other eleven villas in the same row. For the twelve little iron gates of Belitha Villas had each its own peculiar squeak and clang, a fact that added considerably to the scandal-mongering of the little community, and had caused a certain old reprobate at No. 3 to make liberal use of the oil-can.

The master of No. 8 let himself in with his latch-key, and groping his way down the dark and narrow passage pushed open the dining-room door. The room was in darkness save for a little evil-smelling oil-lamp which shed a dismal radiance upon a cloth spread half across the table. An unsympathetic slab of red topside of beef glared aggressively from a dish in which the gravy had set to an unhealthy-looking fat-ringed jelly. This, flanked by the remains of a cottage loaf and a glass of ale, constituted the meal that Charlotte had left for the refreshment of her lord and master. The ale had long been drawn, and stood dead and listless, showing a surface destitute of foam. Edward took one sip, then sat down and lit a cigarette.

His gaze wandered round the little room, the corners of which were in a dingy shadow, and contrasted it in his mind with the grill-room of the Blue Dragon. And then his eye lighted upon a letter propped up against the brass lamp and put there evidently so that it should attract his early attention. He took it up and read it through, then with a few uncomplimentary remarks he thrust it into his pocket and, taking up the lamp, made his way up-stairs. Another moment and he was back again, holding the lamp above his head and searching the dim corners of the room.

A large unwieldy form that had been stretched upon a sofa in the shadow of the window recess roused itself and sat upright. It was clad in a shabby dressing-gown of some dark material and it had a stern eye.

"You're late, Edward."

"Yes, my dear, I am a little, I think. I thought you were up-stairs or had run along to have a chat with Mrs. Oakley. I didn't see you in the shadow there."

"I saw you, Edward, and I saw you read the letter, and I-I heard what you called uncle, and I am not in the habit of running along and having a chat with my neighbours in the middle of the night."

"Well, my dear woman, I didn't know you were there when I read his letter or I wouldn't have said it,-and it's only nine o'clock."

"That's enough, Edward; you've said what you've said. I'm astonished, but it can't be mended; they say men speak their true thoughts when they're in drink."

"I beg your pardon, Charlotte, I--"

"I'm not angry, Edward, but don't bang the lamp down like that, you'll splash the oil out. I repeat I'm not angry, only sorry. When I see a man come home at this hour and turn up his nose at a glass of good honest ale I know what it means. But that doesn't excuse what you said about uncle."

"Well, he's a rotten nuisance. I know as well as you do that we can't afford to upset the old chap, but he shouldn't come down on us like this, especially--"

"Especially what--?"

"--especially when it's-it's not convenient. The fact is, Charlotte, we'll have to draw in our horns a bit. I've got the sack, my dear, the push-the bullet-after twenty-two years-curse 'em."

"Edward, you forget you're speaking to me."

"Oh, no, I don't, my dear. I'm talking exactly how I feel. I'll get even with 'em yet. I'm going to draw some fresh beer."

When Edward returned, Charlotte had lit the hanging lamp with the green shade over the centre of the table and had settled herself in the one saddle-bag chair. Her husband sat opposite to her on a shiny horsehair stool and poured out a glass of foaming ale.

"Your health, my dear," he said, and drank deep.

"Umph! you seem to take it coolly, Edward; I suppose you think it's the easiest thing in the world to get employment at your age. Look at Mr. Hardy at No. 4, out for fifteen months and speaks Portuguese, they say, like a native--"

Edward held up a protesting hand.

"Mr. Hardy, my dear, doesn't enter into this. What's happened to-day has made me do a bit of hard thinking. Forty's not old, Charlotte, it's young. I feel like a boy just let out of school. I'll be full of schemes in a day or two."

Mrs. Povey waved her hands unconvincedly.

"But the present," she remarked with a sinister sweetness. "I suppose that hasn't entered into your head, eh? How about uncle? he's a self-made man and thinks everyone should succeed. When he hears you're sacked he'll cut us off without the shilling. He always says he's got no use for failures."

Mrs. Povey paused, and getting no reply went on.

"Besides, I've written to Aunt Eliza plenty of times and said how well we were doing; in fact, I'm afraid I've exaggerated, and now, here he is coming to visit us. I'm afraid he'll have a sort of awakening-and so will we."

Sitting forward with his hands on his knees, Edward Povey was staring into the little heap of cinders in the heart of which still glowed a dull red. His lips were parted and his eyes were dilated. Mrs. Povey leant over and shook him roughly by the shoulder. Then she moved the jug of beer out of his reach.

"Edward Povey, ain't you ashamed of yourself-the state you're in-go to bed-you hear me?"

Her husband drew his eyes from the contemplation of the fire and motioned to his wife to sit down.

"It's working out," he said, and stretched out his hand for the jug that wasn't there. Then he cleared his throat and told his wife about his adventure of the evening. Charlotte listened in a forbidding silence, and when he had finished:

"I don't know what all this gallivanting about in restaurants has to do with me," she said sharply, "a few shillings a week-it'll hardly pay your fare."

"One moment, dear? You say that uncle comes to us on Monday-you know what his visits are, only business trips, and at the most he'll stay two nights. And, Charlotte, Mr. Kyser goes to Switzerland to-morrow for a month-see?"

"See what?"

"My dear Charlotte, I've always thought that women as a class are inferior to us men, but for sheer unadulterated stupidity and criminal density commend me to Charlotte Povey."

"Edward-you dare to--"

"Dare, my dear, I dare anything. Fifteen years of being compared to Brown, Jones and Robinson and Hardy is enough, madam. The men you have thrown in my face are worms, Charlotte, worms. I dare anything," he repeated, and walked round the table and recovered the jug.

"Now listen, Charlotte," he went on more quietly, when he had reseated himself. "I said that uncle is coming to us on Monday, and that Kyser goes to Switzerland or Sweden, or somewhere to-morrow."

Mrs. Povey was leaning back in her chair, her eyes closed to denote that to her at least the proceedings had lost all interest. Something, however, in the tone of her husband's voice brought her sharply to herself.

"Bushey is a fine place, nice and high, and healthy, Charlotte, and will suit uncle down to the ground. He'll find us living there in style-it'll impress him-and--"

"Edward! are you mad? Bushey-we don't live at Bushey."

Her husband smiled sarcastically.

"Don't we, my dear? really you surprise me-but we're going to, Charlotte, we're going to-for two nights only, as the play-bills say. We are going to borrow Adderbury Cottage. The firm owes me a bit, and I'll take it out in Adderbury Cottages."

Charlotte was fully roused now.

"Edward Povey, I'll not do it."

Her husband brought his fist down on the table with a thump that rattled the crockery and even infused a little flickering life into the surface of the glass of dull supper beer.

"You'll do as I say, Charlotte; I'm master here now, and new brooms sweep clean, you know. Now, put some more coals on, and go to bed."

With a strange sense of awe Mrs. Povey, for the first time in her married life, did as she was bid, and, with a look of wonderment on her vacant face, glided slowly from the room. For perhaps another hour Edward sat over the replenished fire elaborating his scheme. Really it was absurdly simple; of risk there was none. A kind fate had shown them a simple way out of their difficulties, and it would be criminal to ignore it. He knew Uncle Jasper far too well to think of admitting to him that he was a failure in the world. He knew, too, that the old man held him in some little contempt, and he welcomed this chance of showing him his mistake. As for Charlotte, she had evidently committed herself pretty deeply in her correspondence with Aunt Eliza, and Edward anticipated no sustained opposition from that quarter.

It was past midnight when Edward rose and opened the little fumed oak bureau that stood in the recess by the fire-place, and taking a sheet of the notepaper of Messrs. Kyser, Schultz & Company, wrote to Mr. Jasper Jarman telling him how glad Charlotte and himself were to hear that he proposed paying them a visit. He said that the firm for which he had the honour to work had at last awakened to the value of his services, and that a substantial increase of salary had given him the opportunity to receive his dear wife's uncle in a manner more fitted to his position, and that he remained with all good wishes, his uncle's most affectionate nephew, Edward Povey.

The little iron gate creaked again that night, and as Edward dropped the letter into the box at the corner of the terrace he told himself that his new life promised infinitely more possibilities than that to which he had been accustomed for the past fifteen years.

The word phew may have a somewhat indefinite position in the English language, but there was no mistaking the tone in which Mr. Edward Povey said it as he sank wearily into the depths of one of the handsome green leather chairs that stood on either side of the fireplace in the dining-room at Adderbury Cottage, Bushey Heath. The tone of the ejaculation plainly indicated escape, or at any rate temporary relief from a severe nerve-racking strain.

At the further side of the table beneath the great crimson shaded lamp sat Charlotte, her fingers drumming a nervous tattoo upon the polished black oak beneath them. She, too, like her husband showed signs of severe nervous prostration. She raised her head as though about to answer Edward's ejaculation but sighed instead and fell again to her incessant tapping.

"Do stop that infernal row, Charlotte; you sit there and tap, tap, tap, as though-as though-well, give it a rest, it's getting nervy," then after a pause, "where have you put them?"

"Them?"

"Yes,-our honoured guests-making themselves at home, aren't they? Have you noticed, Charlotte, that there's been no mention of how long they're going to stay?"

"I've put them in the room above this. I expect it's old Kyser's room when he's at home here, all chintz and Sheraton."

Edward Povey sat silent for a few moments, gazing stolidly into the fire that was burning brightly in the old-fashioned fire-place. Then he got up and with hands thrust deep in his pockets strode up and down the room, his steps making no sound on the rich turkey carpet.

"It's going to be rather a harder job than I thought, Charlotte," he said at length, pausing in his walk and staring gloomily down at his wife, "so many things have turned out differently to what we thought. Why couldn't the old fool have said he was bringing Aunt Eliza? she's never come before when he's paid us a visit. I thought I should have fainted dead off just now when the old fellow asked me to show him which was the bath-room-he takes a cold tub every morning. Fancy not knowing where the bath-room is in one's own house. I had to open every door I came to and call out 'puss'-said I was looking for a kitten we'd lost-until I came to the right one, the fifth door I opened I think it was."

Edward passed his handkerchief over his forehead, then resumed.

"I blame you, Charlotte, for the unfortunate affair of the photo album. You should have put the book out of sight like you did the framed photos. I can't understand old Kyser keeping such a book full of crocks anyway, I'd be frightened to death of blackmail. You ought to have known that albums are Aunt Eliza's special weakness. She got hold of it at once and made me go through all the lot and tell her who they were and all about them." Edward grew hot at the remembrance. "It isn't easy to invent names and plausible histories for an assorted lot like that at a moment's notice-ugly lot of devils, too."

"The whole idea is yours remember, Edward."

"I know that, woman. Do you think it makes it any easier for me?-you shouldn't have let me-you--"

"You forget, Edward, you said that you were to be master in your own house."

"This isn't my own house, is it? But look here, Charlotte, it's not the least bit of good our arguing how we came to be here. We are here, and here we've got to stay and make the best of a bad job. All we need is a little bit of coaching in some of the minor details. Come over here."

Edward took up a richly chased candelabra and led the way to the fire-place. He removed the little paper shades and let the light fall full upon the portrait of an aged and benevolent-looking gentleman in a splendid old English gilt frame.

"See him, Charlotte; I thought all dinner time your uncle was going to ask who he was. He's sure to ask to-morrow, inquisitive old idiot, and we've got to be prepared. Listen. This old chap here is a Mr. Tobias Kenwick-that doesn't sound faked, does it?-not like Brown or Smith. If uncle asks what he was, say he was an engineer and that he's now retired and living in Peru. This old lady over the sideboard," went on Edward, crossing the room, "can be a friend of my mother's; say she's been dead some years now and that you forget her name but think it was Jane something. Any other portraits he asks about say we picked them up at a sale. By the bye, I must congratulate you on your excuse for the absence of the servant-the dying sister in the North of Scotland was an inspiration. I'd trot off to bed now, Charlotte my dear, if I were you. I'll be up presently. I've got a bit of hard thinking to get through here before I think of sleep."

Left to himself Edward ruminated deeply on the situation in which he had placed himself. Things had not turned out at all as he had expected and dilemmas had crowded thickly and fast upon him. The advent of Aunt Eliza had entirely unnerved him, and the amount of luggage which he had helped to take up to the bedroom seemed to him to be quite unnecessary for a short visit such as he had anticipated. Hitherto the visits of Uncle Jasper had been always the same, a night or two at the most and the days spent in business in London. His luggage had been invariably one suit case and a hatbox. But the present visit pointed more to a prolonged holiday than to a business trip. Edward tried to tell himself that there was nothing to fear, that Kyser would not return for a month, and that the secluded position of Adderbury Cottage was all in favour of the scheme; detection from the outside was a very remote chance.

Edward Povey, however, had not reckoned upon keeping the deception up for more than a few days at the most, neither had he reckoned upon the nerve strain. Tradesmen would be calling for orders-visitors, too, might reasonably be expected. A host of new possibilities arose before the perplexed vision of Edward Povey.

He could, of course, tell all comers that Mr. Kyser had lent him the house furnished. It was merely a small place used at intervals only by its wealthy owner. What more reasonable than that he should place it at the disposal of a friend? If he were alone, the guarding of the secret would be a simple matter, but there was Charlotte to complicate matters-Charlotte, who would innocently enough, by a chance word, upset his most carefully constructed fabrications.

From the hall came, the rich muffled chimes of a steel-faced Sheraton clock. It was midnight, and Edward rose, and crossing to the massive sideboard poured himself out a liberal allowance of brandy, splashing into the glass a little soda-water from a wired seltzogene. Then he proceeded to lock up.

Before barring the front door, he passed out on to the verandah-like porch and running his fingers through his thinning hair let the cool winds of the autumn night play upon the furnace of his forehead. It was very dark and the scene was desolate in the extreme. A solitary light twinkled out here and there from some window in the little village that lay beneath him in the valley, and farther off the pale radiance in the sky denoted the position of the town of Watford. There was a thick shrubbery encircling the house, and the masses of foliage took weird shapes in the darkness, and from a clump of gaunt fir-trees came the dismal note of an owl.

Edward Povey shivered a little, and, quietly closing the door, crept to his bed.