Apples of Gold

by Warwick Deeping

  "Tut, tut, mother, the adventure has not done him any harm. To tell you the truth I'm just a bit proud of it."

  "O, you men!"

  "What about the women, my dear? Do you think they like a fellow the less for being a bit of a dog, and a gallant dog? Why, half of them will be dying to throw themselves at his head."

  "Then you are wrong, Tom. Not all women. It might lose him a good woman."

  "I don't believe it," said Nando; "she would persuade herself that it was her business to save him from the others."

  For some little time there was a feeling of estrangement between Jordan and Mrs. Mary. Outwardly they were the same, but inwardly they felt lost and out of touch with each other. The familiar attitudes of twenty years had changed, and Mrs. Mary could not reconcile herself to the fact of Jordan's vigorous independence. Nando understood it so much better. His wife was a dear sentimentalist who wanted the same flowers to grow each year in the same old garden.

  But there was another household in which Jordan's adventure was spoken of and condemned. Maurice St. Croix brought the tale home and confided it to his father. Envy makes a man prudish.

  "The boy was born in sin," said the Calvinist, "and he will continue in sin. He is a child of infamy."

  Rumours of Jordan's way of living came to Douce's ears. Her brother blurted it to her that young March had had a love affair with a lady who was married.

  Douce understood that her father and brother considered Jordan March a bad man, and a part of her had to agree with them.

  She was sorry.

  X

  Even in youth a man is not always out upon adventure, and for a time Jordan's life ran away very quietly, partly because he willed it so, and partly because his interests returned to other channels. Friendship between a man in the fifties and one in the twenties is somewhat rare, but between Nando and Jordan this friendship was very real. Neither of them asked too much of it, and each was ready to give.

  Moreover, more and more of the serious work of the school fell upon Jordan's shoulders, and since he loved his craft of the sword, his work satisfied him and gave him balance. He was proud of his skill, and he was proud of Tom Nando's reputation. He had a big heart, and a frank and happy way of looking into the hearts of others, and much of the ineffectual restlessness of youth was curbed in him. He was learning to react to life without being too self-conscious over the reaction. There were times when he was aware of the increasing greyness of Tom Nando's head, and of the wrinkles round Mrs. Mary's eyes, and the generous part of him took up the challenge.

  "They have given me everything," he reflected, which was a fact; "Nando's shall be what it has always been if I can keep it there."

  Monsieur Bertrand was no longer a young man, and most of the teaching fell gradually to Jordan. His reputation as a sword-master was very high; it is probable that he was the best man with the small sword in London, and the world found that he could teach as well as he could fence. He was patient, good-tempered, ready to take trouble, and he had a dignity of his own which stood him in good stead. The greater the gentleman the better he and Jordan liked each other. No one ever took liberties with him, any more than they had taken liberties with Tom Nando. Smiling, steady-eyed, there was yet a touch of the inscrutable in him. Men said that he knew his place, although he had got outside it in the affair of Madame Marigold. But that had been the woman's business. He was known as Big March, Big Nando, Gentleman Jordan, and sometimes among his enemies and enviers as The Bastard, but no one ever called him that to his face.

  As for Mrs. Mary, she found this breathing space full of tender satisfaction. Her boy was settling down. She was immensely proud of him. Tom Nando had deserted the church, preferring to spend the whole day in his beloved garden; but every Sunday morning Jordan solemnly walked with her to church, carrying her prayer-book. He towered over her. He looked very dignified and natural and handsome. If the world was amused by the parade, he was as untroubled by their amusement as a big dog is by the yappings of smaller dogs. The event never ceased to thrill Mrs. Mary. Her attitude of devotion all through the service was not directed solely towards the Deity.

  She began to make plans for him, for though she did not want him married, the Bacchus affair had frightened her, and she decided that she would rather have him married to a girl of her own choosing than running away from her to strange ladies. Mrs. Mary was quite a considerable person in these days, and the women of her circle were very polite to her. Mr. March's pedigree might be a little obscure, but Thomas Nando had become a man of property, and property has an unfailing glamour. Their daughters may have thought less of the property and more of the man.

  At all events, Mrs. Mary prepared a succession of dainty dishes, and served them up to Jordan. She began with Miss Jane Lambert, black-eyed, ruddy and buxom, the best-tempered wench in the world, and the daughter of Mr. Lambert, haberdasher, in the Strand. Miss Lambert made eyes of devotion at him, and said, "La, Mr. March, what beautiful weather we are having, aren't we!" But Jordan was not interested in Miss Jane Lambert. Mrs. Mary, experimenting in contrasts, introduced a dear, die-away little thing in place of Miss Lambert's rosy robustness; but Miss Lucy Linacre with her primrose appeal was no more successful than Miss Lambert. She was followed by Miss Prudence Thomson, the daughter of an apothecary, a serious-eyed young woman with a fine pallor and a pretty mouth. Mrs. Mary had hopes of Miss Thomson; she handled Jordan rather cleverly, but she lost him when he happened to catch sight of her ankles.

  "Dear, dear," said Mrs. Mary to her man, "I do wish Jordan would marry. They could have the little house, Tom, on the other side of the court; I am sure Mr. Blenkinsop would sell it. I really thought he was taken with Prue."

  "You did your best, my dear."

  "I know she has thick ankles, Tom, but she is a girl of sense."

  "Mother," said Nando, "if you had not had a neat pair of ankles I should never have come to the point of wondering what was inside your head!"

  "Do be serious, Tom."

  "I assure you that ankles are a very serious matter! Between you and me, my dear, Jordan is much too young to marry."

  "But marriage does so steady a man."

  "Does it! Marriage with any sort of wench who comes along?"

  "Do you think I would let him marry any sort of wench?"

  "I don't think you will have much say in the matter, mother, when he goes after a lass in earnest. At present things are topsy-turvy. These wenches are all after Jordan. Why not wait till Jordan goes after his own wench?"

  Mrs. Mary looked grieved.

  "Women are so sly. I want him to marry a good girl."

  "You think he won't know her when he sees her?"

  "Looks count for so little. I mean—a lad is caught by a pretty face."

  "And God bless him," said Nando, "wasn't I caught that way? I wouldn't give twopence for a lad who asked to see an inventory of all the girl's virtues before he thought of kissing her."

  Nando and his adopted son were much together during this period, and Jordan began to take his place as a responsible citizen and a young man of substance. He became something of a politician at a time when tempers were out of hand. He went with Nando to the Whig coffee and mug houses, and became a member of the Mug-house in Covent Garden. He was no great talker, and he sat and listened to the older men, who hated Papists more than they hated the devil, and who sat solidly in their chairs and made an end of all Tories. Nando's had always been a "Whig" school, but mildly so in a season when even a cabbage was challenged to declare itself on one side or the other. "Moderation" was Tom's great word. When a man has a comfortable chair in a comfortable corner he has no use for the wild heads who want to turn all chairs upside down.

  Nando's favourite haunt, however, was his garden. He dug and pruned and pottered about, and was more proud of his plums and his strawberries than he was of his reputation as a swordsman. He sent baskets of fruit to his neighbours, and was quite convinced of their sincerity when they told him that
his garden grew the best fruit in the county of Middlesex. He loved nothing better than to go into the kitchen and say with a wink, "Put up a basket for two, mother," which meant that he and Mrs. Mary were to spend a night at the cottage, where the gardener's wife kept a room ready. The Nandos' autumn was proving a very pleasant one. In spirit they went about hand in hand. Mrs. Mary had never had so many handsome gowns as she had when she was nearing fifty, and she looked very well in them. Nando told her so.

  "You pretty creature," he said, "you don't seem to grow any older—somehow."

  Which words pleased Mrs. Mary more than did all her gowns and petticoats.

  Nando and Jordan had many a talk, and when Thomas was seated under one of his apple trees with a mug of ale on his knee he had every right to pose as a philosopher.

  "The next world is a bit of a lottery, Dan. Make the most of this one."

  Jordan was quite prepared to agree with him. He found this world a very good world, although he had come to recognize some of its limitations with respect to himself. Certain facts had emerged for him from the Bacchus affair. He might be stronger and wiser than most young men; he was—perhaps—the best swordsman of the day, and yet no gentleman would deign to cross swords with him in earnest. His ambitions were limited. He was shut out from all that other world, save so far as he was allowed to teach it to fence.

  His common sense and his satisfaction with life as it was at that period saved him from any feeling of restlessness or rebellion. He had plenty of good, human food to keep him in condition. He had a reputation; he was something of a public character. Urchins would point at him in the street: That's Big Nando, Gentleman Jordan. He can lick any man in London. Women smiled at him; pretty ladies were more than ready to be distinguished by his favours should he choose to distribute them. He was popular; men treated him with a certain measure of respect, especially the rogues who had seen him crack John Gavidge's crown. He had money in his pocket, two well-furnished rooms of his own in Nando's house, and as much freedom as he pleased. The balance was all in favour of his being satisfied with life.

  And so he was. He discussed the matter with Tom Nando.

  "It seems to me that a man ought to set a limit to things. There are young sparks I know who are always trying to get hold of the coat-tails of some little gentleman. Hangers-on to a world that they will never belong to."

  "You don't want to be a gentleman, Dan?"

  "It depends on what you call a gentleman. I can't be one of the Pall Mall kind. That's obvious."

  "Sound sense, too. I have had a good bite out of life as plain Tom Nando. But some lads are caught by the glitter."

  Jordan was eating strawberries out of a rhubarb leaf.

  "There is one thing, father; I should like to have known who my mother was."

  Nando gave him a quick but guarded look. The Veiled Lady had died five years ago, and it seemed to Nando that there was no good in telling. Why put dreams and possible discontents into a young man's head? He might find plenty of his own.

  "I don't suppose you will ever know that, Dan. What good would it do you?"

  "None, so far as I can see," said Jordan.

  His ambitions fitted his shoes so nicely at this period that he walked comfortably and without much self-questioning along the broad highway. He was not very self-critical, and he did not trouble himself greatly over what other people said or thought of him. There was no sand in these shoes of his, no worm of discontent in the fruit. He was treading one of those smooth and level places which lie between what has been and what is yet to be.

  Early in one month of November Thomas Nando went to bed with a heavy cold on the chest, and being a little peevish over it—as is the nature of man—he was devoutly humoured and pandered to by Mrs. Mary. Among other things he professed to a craving for baked apples—no ordinary apple, mind you, but the particular golden pippins which grew in his garden. There were none of these in the house, but plenty in the apple-room at the gardener's cottage, and Mrs. Mary did not like to confess herself caught sleeping at the post of duty.

  She appealed to Jordan.

  "Meg has the rheumatics, and I wouldn't trust Polly out alone, but I must have some of those pippins before supper time."

  Jordan offered to go.

  "Bertrand can take the gentlemen this afternoon. I'll give my Lord Mulcaster his lesson, and then walk over."

  "I wish you would, Dan, dear. I would not have poor Tom feel sour over a pippin. Men are so fractious—poor dears—when they are abed."

  "I'll be back before dark."

  It was a still and clear November afternoon, with no wind moving, and frost waiting to rime the hedges and the grass when the sun had set. The sky was a clear pale blue, but as Jordan left the houses behind he saw an opalescent haze hanging over the fields and gardens. The sun, descending, grew huge and red behind this film of mist. The brown, freshly turned soil had a tinge of purple, and the grass was grey with dew. The landscape, very still, seemed to be falling asleep, while the London which lay behind him was preparing to light its candles and make of the night what it pleased.

  Jordan had come to the point where the lane branched into three lesser lanes when he heard footsteps behind him, and in turning to the left he glanced back—yet without any very conscious curiosity—to discover who was behind him. He saw a girl in a black cloak and hood and a silver-grey petticoat over her half-hoop. She had a quick, gliding walk, and seemed to float on her little feet with young and serious dignity.

  "Why, what a long time since the last time!" thought Jordan, facing about with a smile.

  The red sun was behind him and shining upon her hair, and there seemed to him to be a shimmer of some purple colour in its redness. She was quite close to him, but she was not looking at him, which he thought rather odd. The soft pallor of her face seemed set towards some very definite purpose. Her eyes had seen, and yet would not see, dark eyes veiled with young austerity.

  "Douce," said he, with his hat in his hand, "I'm big enough to be noticed."

  He spoke as he would have spoken to a child, expecting her to smile suddenly up at him, but when she went past him without so much as a quivering of the lids, and turned to the right and away from him into one of the other lanes, he had one of those strange shocks which make a man look inwards at some unrealized image of himself. He stood staring after her, his hat still in his hand. He was very much astonished.

  And then he went after her, deliberately, with something in him that was very like anger and yet unable to be angry. He had a very poignant feeling that there was nothing whimsical or easy in what she had done.

  "Douce," he said, "I want to speak to you."

  She walked on, perhaps a little faster, and her irresponsive back made him more determined. He meant to know the reason of her blindness. It is possible that he realized that this incident was full of intense significance.

  He caught her up and walked beside her, looking down at her tense, unwelcoming face. Her eyes never lifted to his.

  "You have got to tell me why you did that," he said.

  She made no reply, but drew a little away from him.

  "You won't? Is it because I am what your father once called a child of sin?"

  Her eyelids flickered. Her lips looked pale and compressed.

  "No," she said, "it is not."

  He was more determined and more puzzled.

  "Well, you must tell me."

  "I can't—and I won't," she answered him. "Please leave me alone."

  He walked for another step or two beside her, and then fell behind. She went on. There was the sense of some irrevocable decision in the passing of her little figure, and he stood quite still in the middle of the lane, feeling the sudden hurt of it. He was not in the least angry. He did not accuse her of her wilful injustice. He was conscious of a new and critical attitude towards himself.

  "She would not confess it," he thought, "but that—was—her reason. She lied so as not to hurt me. She is growing up. But why? I s
hould have thought that she, of all people——"

  He turned about, remembering Tom Nando's pippins. His eyes were immensely serious.

  "Is it—that she is growing up like her father? The child liked me, but I suppose that old St. Croix's grown-up daughter might have no use for a man like I'm supposed to be."

  He felt rather bitter. The end of his peaceful period was in sight.

  XI

  Jordan was apt to be direct in his methods, and when some few days later he happened on Mr. Maurice St. Croix walking up past The Mews into St. Martin's Lane, Jordan stopped him. St. Croix was in the company of two flashy young gentlemen who had been dining at one of the "ordinaries" in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross. Maurice introduced Jordan to the two men, a Captain Hill and a Mr. Lionel Vane, and though Jordan had never heard of them before, the two gentlemen had heard of Jordan. St. Croix may have pretended to despise the fencing-master, but he was quite pleased to pose as the patron of such people, and as a young "know-all" and shrewd man about town.

  The gentlemen were red in the face, and hearty after a good dinner, and when they had exchanged a little polite gossip Jordan let it be understood that he wished to have a few words alone with St. Croix. He knew enough of the life of the town to be able to estimate the nature of the relationship between St. Croix and his silk business and these two sleek birds. Maurice had grown very finnicking and debonair. He had all the latest poses and the nice gestures of the beau.

  "Of course, my dear sir. I'll follow you on to Tom's, Harry."

  Captain Hill and Mr. Vane walked on, leaving Jordan and St. Croix together on the sidewalk, and since the place was too crowded for the rather delicate question which Jordan had to ask, he took Maurice aside to the steps of St. Martin's Church. In crossing the road a brewer's dray splashed Mr. St. Croix's shoes and stockings. His shoes had red heels, and his stockings were of white silk. Jordan had noted these details. They were further impressed upon him when Maurice pulled out a cambric handkerchief, and, putting a foot on the step above him, began to dab delicately at the spots of mud on his stockings. He was annoyed.