VII
With the birth of her child Agatha suddenly entered upon a wonderful late blooming, like the blossoming of an autumn rose. She put on a little more flesh—but flesh in the 1890’s was in no way the abomination it was to become in later years. When Agatha walked nowadays she gave hints of broad, motherly hips and ample, comfortable thighs beneath her skirt, and her arms were very, very plump and round, and her face had filled out smoothly and deliciously, accentuating the creaminess of her really lovely complexion. She was a fine Junoesque woman now, stately, queenly even, and her stateliness was borne out by the dignified placidity of her facial expression. She was a mother to be proud of—a mother, especially, to admire; small wonder then, that young Albert was strongly influenced by her ideas and never dreamed of acting contrary to them.
Little Mr. Gold loved her at first sight. He was a nice refined little gentlemanly man, whose name was most eminently appropriate, for he had hair of pale gold (not as much, now, alas, as he once had had) and gold-rimmed spectacles, and across his insignificant little stomach was a gold watch-chain with a gold medal. He was neat in his dress and precise in his habits, and when one was once able to overlook the faintly receding chin and the general lack of personality about his face he was quite a handsome little fellow; it was a pity that all his character had been refined right away. Mr. Gold in conversation often made great play with remarks about “leading boys instead of driving them” and “kindliness always tells in the long run,” and this, it is to be feared, were outward signs of an inward timidity, for Mr. Gold was a master at an elementary school—at the school Albert attended, in fact. Mr. Gold, when he was taking a class, would often make a great show of anger; he would shake his fists and try to make his eyes (little pale blue eyes) flash fire, and he flattered himself that by so doing he was successful in intimidating the boys, but Mr. Gold never entered into conflict of personality with boys singly, never caned one, lout of fourteen or child of eight, without feeling an inward tremor of doubt—“What on earth shall I do if he won’t hold out his hand when I tell him?” Mr. Gold had even developed the weakest characteristic of a master; he would send big riotous boys to the headmaster for quite minor offences, dodging a personal clash under the voiced explanation that they had done something much too wicked for him to deal with.
All this, though, was quite lost on young Albert when he was moved up from the infants’ school and entered Mr. Gold’s class in the boys’ school. If Mr. Gold had any effect at all upon Albert, it was a slight impression of neatness and dapperness; Albert had too great a respect for authority to dream that it might ever be possible for a master to have limbs of water and a heart of fear. And when, one evening, just after school, Albert fell down in the playground and cut his chin rather badly, Albert was quite grateful to Mr. Gold for the kindly manner in which he washed the cut and staunched the bleeding and inquired how he was feeling now; and finally Albert took it quite kindly that Mr. Gold should walk down Colchester Road with him in case he should feel ill on the way, and to explain to his mother that the bloodstains on his shirt and collar were not really his fault.
It was of course teatime when Mr. Gold and Albert reached No. 37 Colchester Road; the china gleamed upon the tablecloth and the kettle steamed beside the fire. What could be more natural than that Mr. Gold should be asked to have a cup? And nothing could be more natural than that Mr. Gold, landlady-ridden bachelor that he was, should yearn for the comfort of Mrs. Brown’s sitting-room and fireside, and should accept with alacrity—alacrity which warmed into well-being when Mr. Gold began to notice Mrs. Brown’s beautiful complexion and well-filled bodice.
Young Albert, of course, as soon as the novelty of having a schoolmaster to tea wore off, found the situation irksome and quietly made his way out of the room, but Mr. Gold lingered. He expanded in the grateful warmth of the fire and Agatha’s well-trained deference towards the superior sex. They chatted amicably enough for quite a while before at last Mr. Gold took himself off after having begged permission to come again, and Agatha at his departure found herself almost dreamy. Queenly she was, but she was of that type of queen which inclines towards a Prince Consort. Mr. Gold’s personified inadequacy made a very definite appeal to her. Why, he was almost shorter than her; she could pick him up and carry him if she wanted to. And he was so refined and gentlemanly too (as a matter of fact, “refaned” was the most frequent word on his lips), while he avoided being so terrifyingly of the public school class as Commander Saville-Samarez. Agatha actually began to calculate what effect a marriage with Mr. Gold might have upon her cherished ambition for Albert, and she decided it would be a good one.
And of course, Agatha having decided that, Mr. Gold’s career as a bachelor was as good as ended. Not that he was unwilling; he walked away from No. 37 through the dusky side streets with his mind full of rosy visions. Mr. Gold was not at all a man to think often about arms and legs, and certainly not about the other parts of the female body, but he caught himself doing so quite often that evening. The hang of the back of Agatha’s skirt, and her neat hands, and her sweet face and firm bosom all conspired to set him imagining. Next morning in class he treated Albert with such downright favouritism that Albert’s fellow nine-year-olds turned and rent him at playtime.
But one single moment of expansion sufficed to destroy all Mr. Gold’s chances. The pity of it was that he was never to know what it was which snatched from his reach all Agatha’s sweet charms, which deprived him of the encirclement of her round white arms, which barred him forever from the paradise of her breast and the calm sweetness of her throat. It was at Mr. Gold’s third visit, or it may have been his fourth—it was his last, at any rate. Mr. Gold was sitting by the fire in the single armchair; he was comfortably inflated with tea and hot buttered toast and an extraordinary good opinion of himself; all three combined to bulge out his waistcoat.
Agatha, of course, as an inferior female ought to do, was sitting before the fire on a less comfortable chair, bent over her sewing. The charming femininity of the pose made a vast appeal to Mr. Gold; he admired the bent head and neck with the firelight playing upon them; whiteness and roundness combined to set little pink pictures moving at the back of his mind. He even visualized Agatha’s legs in their trim stockings—and of course, as the old vulgar saying has it, there was something in her stocking besides her leg! Agatha and a bit of money; an efficient housekeeper and a white-armed wife! The picture was far too irresistible. Mr. Gold puffed himself out a little more; soon he would propose, and he would taste the honeyed sweetness of those demure lips. Meanwhile, the present line of conversation was pleasant; he continued it, laying down the law to the accompaniment of Agatha’s dutiful “Reallys?” and “of courses.”
Agatha too, as she sewed, had little pictures, only not nearly as defined, at the back of her mind. Not, of course, that she visualized any normally clothed portion whatever of Mr. Gold’s anatomy. Agatha did not have that sort of imagination. But she had vague ideas of feeling Mr. Gold’s weak little face pressing upon her breast, and of clasping him in her arms, and of spending every evening as a wife should in the less comfortable of the two chairs by the fire while a tired husband told her what she ought to think about the world in general. But she suddenly stopped sewing, aghast, when the import of Mr. Gold’s latest remarks penetrated to her active intelligence.
“And all this money we spend on unproductive things too,” Mr. Gold was saying. “I don’t believe in it. A one-and-sixpenny income tax will ruin the country before very long. Look at the money we spend on the Army and the Navy. Millions. This Dreadnought that they speak about. Twelve-inch guns and all. To my mind it’s only an excuse for spending money so that there will be more places for people’s nephews and cousins. What do we want a Navy for? Who’s going to attack us, and what good would they get by it, and what harm would it do, anyway? A Navy doesn’t do any good to anyone except the people who get good jobs in it. Germany’s getting just as bad, apparently. It’s all a lot of silly dangerous nonsense. Look at the last war. What right had we got in South Africa? None at all. We were wrong to fight, and it was the hotheads who forced us into it. I said so all along, although of course it made me unpopular. That was why I had to change my school and come to Colchester Road. They called me a pro-Boer, and all that sort of thing. But I stuck it out. I’m a man of peace, I am.”
Mr. Gold only ceased when he noticed the look on Agatha’s face. That so alarmed him that he got up from his chair.
“Good gracious, Mrs. Brown, whatever’s the matter? Are you unwell?”
“No,” said Agatha, shrinking away from him. “No.”
She was merely appalled by the heresies she had heard enunciated. That Mr. Gold, whom she thought she liked, should be a Little Englander, an advocate of disarmament, a pro-Boer, a scoffer at the Dreadnought! It was far too terrible for words. At the same moment she realized what a terribly narrow escape she had had. She dreaded to think what the result upon Albert might have been had he had Mr. Gold as a stepfather. Fancy a world without a British Navy! It was dreadful. Mr. Gold, try as he would, could have thought of nothing to say that could have hurt her more.
“No,” said Agatha. “I’m quite well.”
Quite unconsciously she was imitating the heroines of the novels she had read in the dead old days before the British Navy took hold of her. She “drew herself up to her full height,” her eyes “flashed fire,” she “made an imperious gesture.”
“Please—” said Mr. Gold.
“I—I think it is time for you to go,” said Agatha. Poor Mr. Gold simply could not understand it.
“But, Mrs. Brown—”
All Agatha did was to walk across the room and open the door, and it would have taken someone of stronger personality than Mr. Gold to have withstood the implied command. He crept out crestfallen, and Agatha shut the parlour door decisively behind him. Nothing remained for Mr. Gold to do except to take his hat and coat from the pegs on the landing, stumble downstairs, and let himself out.
“Now listen, Mrs. Rodgers,” said Agatha that evening, “if that—man ever comes again, tell him I’m not at home. You understand?”
And she looked so queenly and her eyes flashed so bright as she said it that Mrs. Rodgers could only say “Lor, mum, yes, mum,” and gaze at her with admiration and without a thought of asking questions. Moreover, when Mr. Gold, inevitably, came calling again, she conveyed Agatha’s message to him with such force and unction as simply to infuriate the unfortunate little man. He had written to her already, and Agatha had simply ignored his letter. He made up for it in the end by calling Albert out of class and giving him a good hiding for no reason whatever.
When Albert told his mother about it later Agatha merely nodded and offered no consolation. She did not mind at all if antipathy sprang up between Albert and the heretical Mr. Gold. Quite on the contrary. Besides, Agatha knew, without even Albert telling her, that hidings from Mr. Gold were not of much account.
Mr. Gold eventually solaced his puzzled exasperation by convincing himself that Agatha was mad.