Basil and Annette: A Novel

by B. L. Farjeon

All the time she was talking she was filling up the plates, and the little party fell-to with a will, Basil eating as heartily as the rest. Mrs. Philpott was delighted at the success of her ruse, but she was careful not to show her pleasure, and when Basil said, in answer to her inquiry, that he had had enough, she did not press him to take more. When dinner was over the children had to be taken out of the room to have their faces washed; they were brought back for Basil to kiss, and then were sent into the street to play policemen.

"You'll let us hear of you from time to time, sir," said Mrs. Philpott, as she and Basil stood at the street door. "Philpott is regular downhearted because of your going. I'm not to let your rooms again, he says, so there they are sir, ready for you whenever you do us the pleasure to come. We're getting along in the world, sir, and the few shillings a-week don't matter to us now."

"I am truly glad to hear it, Mrs. Philpott," said Basil.

"There was a time," continued Mrs. Philpott, "when it did matter, and when every shilling was worth its weight in gold in a manner of speaking. We've had our ups and downs, sir, as most people have, and if it hadn't been for a friendly hand heaven only knows where we should be at this present minute. We were in such low water, sir, we didn't know which way to turn. Philpott says to me, 'Mother,' he says---- I hope I'm not wearying you, sir," said Mrs. Philpott, breaking off in the middle of her sentence.

"Pray go on," said Basil, feeling that it would be churlish to check her.

"It's a comfort, sir," continued Mrs. Philpott, "to open one's heart. It doesn't make me melancholy to look back to those days, though my spirit was almost broke at the time; I'm proud and grateful that we've tided them over, with the help of God and the good friend He sent us. 'Mother,' says Philpott to me, 'I'm on my beam ends. We're in a wood, and there's no way out of it.' 'Don't you go on like that, father,' I says; 'you keep on trying, and you'll see a way out presently.' For I'm one of that sort of women, sir, if you won't mind my saying as much, who never give in and don't know when they're beat. I don't mean to say I don't suffer; I do, but I put a brave face on it and never: say die. 'You keep on trying, father,' I says. 'Now haven't I kept on trying?' says he. 'For eight weeks I've answered every advertisement in the paper, and applied for a job in hundreds and hundreds of places without getting the smell of one. I'm ashamed to look you in the face, mother, for if it wasn't for you our boy would starve.' We only had one then, sir, and as for being ashamed to look me in the face Philpott ought to have been ashamed to say as much. All that I did was to get a day's charing wherever I could, and a bit of washing when I heard there was a chance of it, and that was how we kept the wolf from the door. But I fell ill, sir, and couldn't stir out of doors, and was so weak that I couldn't stand at the wash-tub without fainting away. Things were bad indeed then, and Philpott took on so that I did lose heart a bit. Well, sir, when we'd parted with everything we could raise a penny upon, when we didn't know where we should get our next meal from though it was only dry bread, heaven sent us a friend. An old friend of Philpott's, sir, that he hadn't seen for years, and that he'd been fond of and kind to when he was a young man, before he kept company with me. Philpott had lent him a couple of pound, and he'd gone off to America, and, now, sir, now, in the very nick of time, he came home to pay it back. Did you ever see the sun shine as bright as bright can be in a dark room at ten o'clock at night--for that was the time when Philpott's friend opened the door, and cried, 'Does Mr. Philpott live here?' It shone in our room, sir, though there was never a candle to light it up, and Philpott was sitting by me with his head in his hands. Philpott starts up in a fright--when people are in the state we were brought to the least unexpected, thing makes their hearts beat with fear--he starts up and says, 'Who are you?' 'That's Philpott's voice,' says our friend. 'I'd know it among a thousand; but don't you know mine, old fellow? And what are you sitting in the dark for?' Then he tells us who he is, and Philpott takes hold of his hand and says he's glad to see his old friend--which he couldn't, sir--and, ashamed of his poverty, pulls him out of the room. He comes back almost directly, and stoops over me and kisses me, and whispers that heaven has sent us a friend when most we needed one, and I feel my dear man's tears on my face. Then, sir, if you'll believe me it seemed to me as if the sun was shining in our dark room, and all the trouble in my mind flew straight away. From that time all went well with us; it was right about face in real earnest. Philpott's friend had another friend who got my husband in the force, and now we've got a bit of money put by for a rainy day, and don't need the rent for a couple of empty rooms."

Mrs. Philpott's account of her troubles was much longer than she intended to make it, and her concluding words were spoken wistfully and appealingly. They were not lost upon Basil, but they did not turn him from his purpose. With a kindly pressure of her hand, and promising to call and see her unless circumstances prevented--which meant unless his fortunes remained in their present desperate condition--he took his leave of her and passed out of her sight.

"Poor young gentleman," sighed the good woman. "I would have given the world if he'd have stopped with us. What on earth will become of him? It's hard to come down like that. Better to be born poor and remain so, than to be born rich and lose everything. His face was the image of despair, though he was politeness itself all the time I was talking. I sha'n't be able to get him out of my head."

She and her husband talked of him that night, and if kind wishes and sympathising words were of practical value, Basil would have been comforted and strengthened.

Strengthened in some poor way he was. It had been his hard fate to be made the victim of as black treachery as one man ever practised towards another; but he had met with kindness also at the hands of strangers. He strove to extract consolation from that reflection. Heaven knows he needed it, for he was now to make acquaintance with poverty in its grimmest aspect. He was absolutely powerless. He had debated with himself various courses which might be said to be open to a man in his extremity, but he saw no possible road to success in any one of them. The most feasible was that he should go to a capable lawyer and endeavour to enlist his skill on his behalf. But what lawyer would listen to a man who presented himself with a tale so strange and without the smallest means to pay for services rendered? It would be a natural conclusion that he was mad, or that he, being Newman Chaytor, was adopting this desperate expedient to prove himself to be Basil Whittingham. That he was a gentleman was true; he had the manners of one, but so had many who were not gentlemen. Then his appearance was against him; he had no other clothes than those he stood upright in, and these were shabby and in bad repair. Even if he had possessed assurance, it would not have served him--nay, it would have told against him, as proclaiming, "Here is a plausible scoundrel, who seeks to deceive us by swagger." He was truly in a helpless plight.