“Nor will my happiness,” he said, “be complete—kck—until I have seen the name of Augustus Carp publicly inscribed—kck—on the church notice board, as one of the churchwardens of my parish.”
Without delay, therefore, I resolved to transfer my worship to the church presided over by my friend, and within six months, I had obtained the ten years’ tenancy of Wilhelmina, Nassington Park Gardens. This I have since renewed, and as sidesman, churchwarden, Sunday School superintendent and secretary of the Glee Club, no less than as President of the St. Potamus Purity League, I could scarcely have done otherwise. And indeed I rather fear that were I to suggest leaving, I should be forcibly prevented by my fellow-parishioners. My wife and her sisters, too, as they have frequently told me, have never regretted leaving Camberwell, slightly disturbed, as they have occasionally been, by the acute decline of their brother Ezekiel.
They have seldom seen him, however, and then but accidentally, and as for myself I have only met him once, when I chanced to encounter him at the entrance of the Albany, where, as I understood, he then had chambers. Completely shaved and evidently massaged, he was flicking a particle of dust from his left coat-sleeve, and on catching sight of me, he surveyed me through a monocle with a thin gold chain and a tortoiseshell rim.
“Hullo, Carp,” he said. “Taxi,” and a taxi being present, I was spared from replying.
Nor have I been denied—albeit it was not until a year ago that Providence saw fit to reward my efforts—the crowning satisfaction of becoming the father of a small, but still surviving, boy; and the happiest auguries, I think, can safely be discerned in the circumstances surrounding his birth. Indeed so amazingly similar were these to those ushering in my own that I cannot do better, perhaps, than close this volume with a scene from which my readers, I hope, will derive as intense a joy as that which was conferred upon myself.
Born at half-past three on a February morning, the world having been decked with a slight snow-fall, it was then that the trained nurse in attendance on the case opened the bedroom door and emerged on the landing. I had gone outside to lean over the gate, and was still leaning there when she opened the door, but Faith and Hope, with Simeon Whey’s housekeeper, were standing with bowed heads at the foot of the stairs. Prone in the parlour, and stretched in uneasy attitudes, Charity and Understanding were snatching a troubled sleep, while two female members of the St. Potamus Purity League were upon their knees in the back kitchen. But for the fact indeed that Charity and Understanding had slight impediments in their noses, the whole house would have been wrapped in the profoundest stillness.
Simeon Whey’s housekeeper was the first to see the nurse, though she only saw her, as it were, through a mist. The nurse was the first to speak in a voice tremulous with emotion.
“Where’s Mr. Carp?” she said.
“He’s just gone outside,” said Simeon Whey’s housekeeper.
Something splashed heavily on the hall linoleum. It was a drop of moisture from the nurse’s forehead.