CHAPTER IX
WHAT THE NECKTIE TOLD
The grey-blue reek of Hampton Bagot is curling up into the azure sky. From the hill on which the church stands the little village lies snug like a bead on a chain—the London Road—in a jewel-case of billowy satin: green Ardenshire. A haunt of ancient peace this August day. The only noises are the pleasant rattle of a reaping-machine and the musical tinkle of an anvil, while now and again the petulant ring of a cyclist's bell reaches the ear of the lounger on the hill, and thrills some honest cottager with the hope that the ringer may rest at her house for tea.
The faint sound of a far whistle reminds us that time has passed since we last stood in Hampton's one street: a mile and a half away, the station, which is to advertise the name of the village to travelling humanity for ever, has been finished, and several times each day trains to and from Birmingham condescend to pause in their puffing progress at the tiny platform. But most of them go squealing through, indignant at finding such a contemptible little station on their line. The stationmaster-porter-ticket-collector and his junior are not overworked—or else they could not play so long with the latter's terrier, who is the liveliest member of the staff. But there are a few tickets to be taken every day, a few carriage-doors to be shut, a few whistles to blow, a few throbs of importance for the young official.
We know of one passenger who is to arrive this Saturday afternoon; at least, they are expecting him at Hampton Bagot.
The station has made no difference to the village. Certainly none to the figure at the Post Office door. The smile might have been registered, the tilt of the coat-tails patented. Edward John Charles has not altered a hair, although it is almost six years since we last saw him wagging his tails here.
"You're expectin' 'im 'ome to-day, Ed'ard John, I 'ear," the inefficient Miffin observes as he crosses to the Charles establishment for an ounce of shag.
"Yes, and about time, I think. Why, he ain't been through this door for two year, and last time 'e could on'y stay four days."
"In moi opinion, them youths what goes to the cities learns to despise their 'umble 'omes," Miffin commented, with a sad fall of the eyes. "Now, if I 'ad a son 'e'd 'ave to stay at 'ome, and take up 'is fether's trade."
"But you ain't got a son, Miffin, and that's all the difference. If there was a young Miffin, why, you're just the man to ha' been proud o' 'im makin' 'is way in the world. Mind you, Hampton ain't the on'y place under the sun."
"It'll be strange for 'Enry to come to the station," said Miffin, adroitly diverting the drift of the talk; for he was touchy on the subject of children, being as discontented because he had none as most of the village folk were because they had so many.
"He says it's going to bring 'im often back to us, and I believe he means it."
"Well, it's to be 'oped 'e'll never regret leavin' 'ome," was the last croak of the gloomy tailor, as he rammed home a charge of shag into his burnt cherry-wood pipe with his claw-like forefinger, and stepped back to his flat irons.
Edward John chuckled contentedly. Miffin was a constant entertainment to him. He had a suspicion that the tailor had been appointed by Providence to prevent his becoming unduly puffed up about his talented son.
Just in time for tea, the subject of their conversation jumped down from the butcher's gig in which he had travelled from the station. His father welcomed him with a sedate shake of the hand; his sisters three ran to him and were shyly kissed. How our sisters shoot straight into womanhood with the gathering up of their back hair and the lengthening of their frocks! A brotherly kiss after two years to a sister who may have another young man to kiss her, produces shyness in the least self-conscious of young men.
In the parlour Henry found his mother, still the timid, withered little woman he had always known her, busy setting the tea, her curl-papers still eloquent of her household toils. He was conscious of the curl-papers for the first time as he kissed her dry lips. The near view of the papers offended some new feeling within him. He was strangely tempted to pluck them out.
There was a great change to be noted in the appearance of the only Henry. It was four years since he had left Wheelton, almost six since he went away to Stratford, and Laysford especially stamps its character on its residents.
"Bless me, 'Enry, but you're growing all to legs, like a young colt," his father remarked, as he seated himself and took a smiling survey of his son, who was given the honour of the arm-chair; a fact that marked another stage in his upward career. "All to legs, my boy!"
"But there's lots of time to fill out yet, dad. I weigh ten stone eleven."
"Mostly bones, eh?"
"But I feel all right."
"You look it, my lad; and between you an' I, I'd rather have your bones than my beef!"
"I hope you have always remembered to wear flannel next your skin, Henry?" his mother ventured to ask, in the hilarious moment which her husband was enjoying as the meed of his merry thought.
"Oh, I'm all right, mother! Don't worry about me. Wear flannel next the skin, drink cod-liver oil like water, and am never without a chest-protector on the hottest day."
His sisters laughed, but doubted their ears. Henry had never been jocular. Evidently the neat cut of his summer suit, the elegant tie, were not the only things Laysford had endowed him with.
"Your mother always was coddling you up as a boy. She forgets that you're a man now. Why, your moustache is big enough for a Frenchie. Don't it get into the tea? I never could abide a moustache. It's one of they furrin ideas."
"My moustache is rather admired, dad," said Henry brightly, glancing slily at his sisters.
"Hark at the lad.... By whom?"
"Ladies ... perhaps!"
Oh, Henry, you might have broken it more gently! Edward John smiled and called him "a young dog"; his mother's face clouded for a moment, and brightened; the girls understood—at least Dora, who was nineteen, and Kit, who was two years younger, understood—and laughed. Milly was only a maiden of bashful fifteen.
"It's simply wonnerful, 'Enry, how you've smartened up since you were 'ome two years ago. Your second two years have done more for you than the first," said Edward John, buttering his bread at the tea-table.
"Glad you think so, dad. But I say, mother, it's funny to be buttering my own bread again; I haven't buttered any since I was at home last."
"When I was in London I never buttered a bit. All done for you. Wonnerful how they encourage laziness in the city." Edward John had need to remind them that he had been to London; for Henry had actually spent two summer holidays there instead of coming to Hampton, and the glory of his father's visit was in danger of being tarnished.
"Still thinking o' going to London some day for good, I suppose?" he went on.
"Oh, of course; but the fact is that the more I learn of journalism the more difficult London seems. It is all plain sailing at eighteen; but at twenty-two ... well, I'm just beginning to think I'm not a heaven-born genius, dad."
"But it ain't what you think about yourself that matters."
"That's just what does matter—in journalism. I've learned one great thing since leaving home. The world takes a man pretty much at his own valuation. A fool who takes himself seriously is like to be taken seriously by other fools, and you know how many fools there are in England according to Carlyle."
"Well, then, if you are a fool, try it," retorted the postmaster merrily.
"But a wise man, who thinks himself a fool, is likely to be thought a fool by—"
"Wise men?"
"Perhaps by them also; but certainly by the fools, who are in the majority."
"Nonsense, my lad! Was it for this I paid that Springthorpe fellow five-and-twenty pounds?"
"Henry's only joking, dad," Dora suggested. Her sense of humour was not magnetic.
"A jest in earnest, Dora; for the more one learns the less one knows."
An amazing fellow: a veritable changeling this Henry! His mother watched him almost like a stranger.
"Rank heresy, now, you're talking. I wunner what old Mr. Needham would say to that?" exclaimed his father, who had a fear that his son had grown a trifle conceited.
"That I had learned a lot since you wanted him to tackle me on Virgil. But I like my work for all that; in fact, because of it. It is about the only kind of work in which one is learning every day; and I'm beginning to think that the real fun of life is not the knowledge of things so much as the getting to know them."
"Well, look 'ere, 'Enry. You're dragging your poor old father out into deep waters, an' you know he can't swim. You're talking like one of your articles. For I read 'em all that you mark with blue pencil, and your mother keeps 'em, even when she's hard up for paper to light the fire."
Henry wondered in his heart if, at a pinch, she would have used one for her curl-papers. He noticed just then, for the first time in his life, that the parlour of his old home was very small; the ceiling was so low that he found himself almost choking for breath when he looked up.
Dora and her mother were clearing away the tea-dishes, and Henry went upstairs to the bedroom where he would sleep with his father. The old nest had altered in a hundred ways, although none but Henry knew that. He had once been a bird of the brood here, but he had taken wings away, and to return for a fortnight once in two years was only to realise how far his wings had carried him. Henry had been born here, the people that he loved the best of all were still living here in the old home—his old home. Yet it could never be anything but his old home now. We talk about returning home; but really we never do so. Once we leave the home of our boyhood and youth, we never return again. It is seldom we wish to go back to the old life; and when the wish is there, Fate is usually against its fulfilment.
Henry Charles had certainly altered in a bewildering variety of ways since we first made his acquaintance. Then a tall, sallow youth of sixteen, ungainly in limb and not well-featured, his nose unshapely, his mouth too large, but a pair of dark eyes gleaming with spirit to light up the homeliness of the face. Now, a man—oh, the few short years, the tiny bridge across the chasm, the bridge we never pass again!—a man: tall as a dragoon, leggy, it is true, as the shrewd eye of his father had judged; but no longer thin to veritable lantern jaws, rather a promise of ample fleshing, and a nose that had sharpened itself into an organ not uncomely of outline. This changing of the nose is one of the most curious of our few tadpole resemblances. His mouth might still be large, but a glossy moustache hides many an anti-Cupid pair of lips, which a few passes of the razor would unmask to set the dear boy flying. Henry's hair was raven black and ample—perilously near to disaster for a hero. But we must have the truth in this narrative, cost what it may.
As he stood in the bedroom, brushing his hair and bending carefully to avoid knocking his head against the ceiling, which sloped steeply to the dormer window, where stood the looking-glass on its old mahogany table with the white linen cover, Henry presented the picture of a wholesome young Englishman, proud of brain rather than muscle, and differing therein from the ruck of his fellows, but joining hands with them again in the careful touch to his hair, the neat collar, the pretty necktie.
Now, the moment a young man begins to look to his neckties, unless he is a mere dude, there is a reason for it. Henry Charles was impossible miles from dudeism; ergo, there was a reason for his lingering at the looking-glass.
He had been slower than the average young man to awaken to the fact that for most male beings still unmated, there is some young lady deeply interested in his neckties and the cut of his coat. But he had awakened, and now the difficulty was to know which young lady: there seemed to be so many in Laysford who took an interest in the clever young assistant editor of the Leader. To be on the safe side, it was well to be observant of the sartorial conventions, even while in the inner recesses of the literary mind disdaining them.
That is Henry's state of mind when we see him after tea at the mirror in the camceiled bedroom. If it surprises you, remember that it is four years since you met him last, and many things can happen in that time. How do we know what has happened to him? His necktie tells us something, doesn't it?