Donkey Boy

by Henry Williamson

  The banging and knocking from the other half of the shop stopped when the door opened, striking a bell, and a slim, straw-hatted and black-bearded man came in. He bowed to Miss Thoroughgood and swept off his boater.

  “And how may I be of service to you, if you please,” as Miss Thoroughgood’s towering hat was inclined with suitable hauteur towards the newcomer.

  “Ah, mademoiselle, veuillez me dire, s’il vous plait, parlez vous français?” enquired Hugh, hoping to high heaven that the old buzzfuzz didn’t.

  “Non, monsieu.” Miss Thoroughgood looked non-plussed.

  “Eh bien, then I must wait for a Baedeker,” and the supposed Frenchman spread his hands.

  “You speak a little English, I presume?”

  “Ver’ little, ever so tiny, ma’mselle.” The speaker’s manner was uneasy. “I vill vait for diction-aire, yes?” He swept off his hat again. Miss Thoroughgood looked at Hetty significantly. The hammering had not been resumed. Gratefully Miss Thoroughgood thought of the nearness of the snobs, should a lunatic have come in to attack her.

  “Now,” she said, importantly, turning to Hetty, “Tell me what it is you want.”

  “I was wondering if you know of a little maid to live in, and help with a little boy, and take him out in the mailcart for walks sometimes.”

  “Oh, I see. I beg your pardon! Your face is so young and fresh, I was deceived! You require a junior nursemaid. What other staff do you keep?”

  “I have a woman who comes in to clean one half day a week, and a full day on Mondays for the washing.”

  “And that is all, is it?”

  “Yes,” said Hetty, blushing.

  “You are married, of course.”

  “Oh yes,” smiling. “And I work in the house, and do the cooking. A young girl to help, generally, is what I require.”

  “That ees what I require, too!” cried Hugh. “Madame, permit me to—’ow do you zay it—to con-grat-u-latt you on your magnifique Paris Theatre Bloos!” He swept off his hat, and bowed once more.

  Miss Thoroughgood looked startled: then she glanced down at her blouse, which covered her from waist to chin. She was flattered by the attention to it, for it had been bought for the Jubilee celebrations, only after considerable and intermittent desire and rumination. From close against her adam’s apple to below the collar-bone was a gauzed yoke, with imitation pearl encirclement in several tiers, joined to an extensive shoulder frill in fine pleated muslin by a festooned band of mirror velvet, sprinkled with cut crystal cabochons. Miss Thoroughgood thought it most distingué. It gave her a feeling of being Society, with gay huzzars and gentlemen of the Household Cavalry about her; for upon the flanks of her Jubilee blouse were extended battlemented epaulettes of black jetted guipure over an underlay of ruby satin. Miss Thoroughgood had bought it specially for the garden party given by the Mayor and Mayoress, on the afternoon of the Jubilee celebration, together with an equally impressive hat. When Hetty had come in, Miss Thoroughgood had been writing her letter of thanks.

  “Madame, I hoffer my sairvices to the young lady as valet and mailcart garçon to push, push, push—like this—you watch me pushing, ver’ steady push-man——” and pretending to be pushing a mailcart, Hugh opened the door, closed it with one hand while with the other holding an imaginary handle, and disappeared beyond range of the window.

  “He’s been drinking, obviously,” remarked Miss Thoroughgood, nodding the assembly of flora and fauna piled on her head. “He was no Frenchman, but some conceited nobody. His manner was all put on. Now, let me see what I can do for you. Nothing at present, I am afraid, for your requirements. But girls keep coming in, and I will send you the next one who registers with me. About sixteen pounds a year? Will you be prepared to pay that for a reliable girl?”

  Hetty blushed again with embarrassment. Sixteen pounds a year! She’said lamely, “I really do not know. You see, Mrs. Bigge, who recommended you to me——”

  “Mrs. Bigge? Do I know a Mrs. Bigge? How do you spell it? With two gees, or one?”

  “I think with two gees, Miss Thoroughgood.”

  “Well, I know a Mrs. Legge, with two gees, but not a Mrs. Bigge, with two gees. The Legges, I need hardly say, are a very old family connected with Loos’ am. Our late Vicar was Canon the Honourable Legge, of course, brother of the lord of the manor, the Earl of Dartmouth, you know. Yes, the Very Reverend the Honourable Legge left us recently, on preferment to the bishopric of Lichfield.”

  “Yes, of course, I remember,” said Hetty, hoping that she would not giggle at the picture of the Honourable Legge as a leg walking off by itself! Oh, dear, she must not laugh. She managed to say, “Of course, naturally, I remember. Mrs. Birkitt, the midwife, was also with Canon Legge, she has told me about the little Legges.”

  At this point she collapsed with laughter. That naughty boy Hughie had returned, wearing the false beard under his chin, in the manner of Brigham Young the Mormon. Holding up a finger as though he were preaching, Hugh said, “Do forgive me, dear lady, for not recognising you just now—I was but recently disguised as a gee with four legs—the usual number, you know—and right well I needed every one of them, for my enemies are hot in pursuit of me—I must away—Time waits for no man,” and bowing yet again, with a sweep of his boater, Hugh retired.

  “A joker,” said Miss Thoroughgood. “It was obvious to me from the very first that he was an impostor. Frenchmen have little pointed beards. No, I was not taken in. Is he known to you, Mrs. — Mrs.?”

  “I am Mrs. Maddison. He is my brother,” replied Hetty. “I have not seen him for a long time, ever since we moved into our new house. He is always up to some joke or other.”

  “Your husband, or your brother?”

  “Oh, how silly of me, my brother of course! Mr. Maddison is in the City.”

  “Indeed. Well, let me take your address, and I will see what I can do for you.” She wrote down particulars. The hammering began again. Hetty paid a shilling fee, and accepted Miss Thoroughgood’s dictum that £16 a year was the correct wage to offer. “The cost of living has gone up, you see,” she said, playing with a silver pencil, her eyes on the desk before her. “There will be no further fees to be paid by you, of course, if we can suit you.”

  Hetty hesitated. Miss Thoroughgood, looking up and smiling her yellow hare-tooth smile, said, “Well, shall we say thirteen pounds, for a good class girl? Very well, good morning to you, Mrs. Maddison.”

  Hetty was glad to be outside. Hugh and Mrs. Bigge were waiting for her. Hugh insisted on taking them to coffee in a place with the words, GOOD PULL UP FOR CARMEN painted on the wall below the glass window. “You get the best coffee and dough-nuts in London in such places,” he said. “But it is best to bring your own tin-can out of which to drink it,” he added. “Well, perhaps I’ve made a mistake this time,” he continued, sipping the greenish liquid. “They make the soup in the same crock as the coffee in this house, I fancy.”

  “Go on, drink it up,” growled Mrs. Bigge in her deep voice. “It’s hot, and I find it very tasty.”

  Hugh looked at her with interest. “Bravo,” he said. “Spoken with the spirit of emancipation!”

  Mrs. Bigge thought how happy Hetty looked. Poor girl, she was not properly appreciated by her husband. He would never unbend sufficiently to do what they were doing. “My!” she said. “If Josiah could see me where I am, he would think I have kicked over the traces!”

  “What a wonderful character the old girl in the Agency is,” said Hugh. “You know, Hetty, I want to stage an act on the halls, and the trouble is, I see so much about me—everyone I see, almost, is funny. I worked out an act, to include Little Old Carlo, the Ning-a-ning Man, complete with monkey and barrel organ. I as Gonzalo, the Wandering Violinist. I found a chap to play Carlo, but the music halls won’t look at it. They want their crude beery songs. I think there is a future for sketches, comic characters not too far apart from real life—rather on the Dickens lines. But managers are the very devil—if you’ll exc
use the term, mar’m. They’ve no imagination. They want the same old gags and forms. They’re like ‘Old Loos’am’, conventional. My lor’, she’s a character! She out-bowers the bower bird. Talk about fin-de-siècle! She is the midwife of the twentieth century, that rig-out.”

  Mrs. Bigge enjoyed herself greatly. He was such a refreshing young man, full of ideas.

  “Yes,” went on Hugh. “I must work out an idea, to use characters one meets with, as Dickens did. But managers are so fixed in their ideas of what they imagine the public wants. Oscar Wilde has blown a hole in the old convention, letting in fresh air, and I want to carry on for him—poor fellow, he’s done for himself, I fear. He’s rotting in a Paris garret. If I had the cash, I’d cross the Channel and seek him out and give him a wonderful dinner, just to let him know that it isn’t everyone who’s shocked by the exposé. Anyway, the man in his work, and his work is witty, and by heaven, if good christians are the salt of the earth, poets’ wits are the pepper.”

  “Is that the Oscar Wilde whose trial filled ‘The News of the World’ a little while ago, Mr. Turney?” enquired Mrs. Bigge.

  Now for it, thought Hugh: the old girl’s liked me so far: now see her face fall. “Yes, ma’m,” he said.

  “Oh,” exclaimed Mrs. Bigge. Then, “Did you know him, Mr. Turney?”

  “Unfortunately not, ma’m, I had left the ’varsity when he honoured the Fin de Siècle with a visit. For had I been present, I would to-day be able to stand in the drawing-rooms of the assured and to claim, with another blackguard like myself, but also a man of genius, unlike myself—I refer of course to the celebrated Frank Harris—that Wilde remains my great friend.”

  Hetty was a little apprehensive, so she said, “My brother is a joker, Mrs. Bigge, and does not really mean all he says.” She remembered Dickie reading her bits about the trial from The Morning Post, from his armchair, during several evenings in early spring, two years before. She remembered it well, for he had on the table beside him several envelopes containing seeds, left out from planting in the garden of Comfort House. She recalled a phrase Dickie had used. It is all pure filth, of course. Hetty had not known exactly what had happened, to cause such a trial, but ever since then the name Oscar Wilde, whenever she had heard it spoken or come across it in the newspaper, had repelled her, for the name conveyed to her an atmosphere of coarseness, badness, depravity, violence, and terror. Hughie’s words, therefore, had hurt Hetty; so she did not want to believe them.

  “I can see you are more than a fair weather friend,” said Mrs. Bigge.

  “Yes, of course he is, aren’t you, Hughie?” cried Hetty, in relief. Then, to change the subject, she enquired if he had seen any Shakespearean plays lately.

  “No,” said Hugh. “But I have seen some of a new fellow, George Bernard Shaw, who is going to count quite a lot in the future, you mark my words. Do you read ‘The Saturday Review,’ ma’m?”

  “No, Josiah takes ‘The Daily Chronicle,’ and we borrow ‘The Church Times,’ and sometimes ‘The British Weekly,’ so we are not in the swim of the Arts at all, Mr. Turney.”

  “But Mr. Bigge plays the harp beautifully, Hughie. Hughie plays the violin, you know, Mrs. Bigge. Yes!” she cried, happily, “He is very musical.” She was excited to be nearing the prospect of seeing the house again, and Sonny and the darlingest little Mavis. It was time to go back.

  “My Josie plays every Wednesday evening, here’s the tripe for his supper,” and Mrs. Bigge, stopping at her gate, held up the shopping basket. “Well, dear, it was a nice walk down to the High Street and back, I enjoyed myself hearing so much interesting talk from your brother. May I call you Hugh, young man? I am very nearly old enough to be your mother, you know.”

  “Yes, but only if we were children playing at ‘Mothers and Fathers’, ma’m! Please call me Hugh, I love it. And please believe me when I say that I am doubly glad that I came to visit m’ sister today, for I have not only seen her, but have met one of her friends who, like herself, is of that rare quality which never ages—the quality of the eternally young in heart.” And sweeping off his boater, Hugh bowed as he held open the gate of “Montrose” for Mrs. Bigge.

  “Thank you, Hugh.”

  “And now, in the twinkling of an eye, I travel from the land of the haggis to the land of the sausage—from Montrose to Lindenheim——” as Mrs. Bigge let herself into her front door. “Well, old girl, I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since we were all together at Maybury. You know the guv’nor is giving up the house at Cross Aulton, of course?”

  Hetty was startled. “Oh, Hughie, when?”

  “At Michaelmas next, I understand. So Dorrie told me. I spent the night with her. I’ll tell you all about it later. Well, Mrs. Feeney, the bad penny has returned! Hullo, whose voice do I hear in the distance?”

  They listened at the foot of the stairs. From far off came a gentle, plaintive cry.

  “Minnie mummie, Minnie mummie, Minnie mummie.”

  “Just coming, Sonnie dear!” called up Hetty. “Has he been a good boy, Mrs. Feeney?”

  “Oh yes, mum, as good as gold. So has Mavis, not so much as a stir while you’ve been gone. I took a peep now and agen, just to make sure she wasn’t face down in that pillow Mrs. Cakebread sent you, ma’m. But she was rightsides up.”

  “OO-ee come mummie, Oo-ee come! Bile-inn tweedledee, bile-inn tweedledee, p’e mummie!”

  “Straight from the lap of the gods!” said Hugh Turney. “There’s my public, Hetty, d’you see? The next generation! When the cursed modern idiom is swept away, all the pretentiousness, the façades, the hypocrisy of our age. Eh, Mrs. Feeney, whatsay?”

  “There’ll always be sweeping away of somp’in’, Mr. Hugh. Now would you like a cup of tea, mum? The kettle’s boiling. I’ve washed and hung out the diapers, mum.”

  “I think I would, and I am sure you could do with one, Mrs. Feeney. Hughie? All right, Sonny dear, Mummie is just coming! Be patient a little longer, dear. Hughie, go up and see Sonny, will you? He loves you so, he recognised your voice as soon as we came into the house. Tell him I’ll be up soon.”

  Hugh went upstairs. Soon the boy’s laughter followed, with joyful shouts and imitations of the violin, followed by bag-pipes. Hugh did this by holding back his head, thus stretching his neck, and with a finger and thumb closing nostrils, gave forth a nasal whining of varied pitch interrupted by taps on his adam’s apple. Then in rapid succession he was a trumpet, a banjo, bassoon, drum, and other instruments. All the while his audience was standing by the cot-rails, its face responding to the artiste’s every mood and gesture. There was a pause. “Enough of onomatopoeia, Phillip my son. Now we will have something decent. Poetry. How about the Ettrick Shepherd Lad? He ended up, like all poets, in a mess,

  ‘Bird of the wilderness, Blithesome and cumberless, Sweet be thy mattins o’er moorland and lea——.’”

  Fixing the child with his eyes, Hugh continued, while a feeling of sadness arose in him, “Emblem of happiness, Blest be thy dwelling place—O, to abide in the desert with thee.”

  He sighed. Phillip stared at the saddening eyes. Affected by the boy’s attentive pathos, by the line of his sensitive mouth, drooping at the corners, by the feeling of wild moorland purity and spring-water, Hugh’s voice became wild with longing as his spirit took possession of him. It became most tender, rising and falling in soft modulation.

  “‘Wild is thy lay and loud

  Far in the downy cloud

  Love gives it energy

  Love gave it birth.

  Where on thy dewy wing

  Where art thou journeying?

  Thy lay is in heaven

  Thy love is on earth!

  O’er fell and fountain sheen,

  O’er moor and mountain green,

  O’er the red streamers that herald the dawn!

  O’er the rainbow’s rim,

  Over the moonbeam dim,

  Musical cherub sing

  Soaring away.

  Then when the gl
oaming comes

  Low in the heather blooms

  Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be.’”

  Intently with the child’s dark blue eyes upon him, Hughie concluded with slow intensity,

  “‘Bird of the wilderness, blithesome and cumberless,

  O to abide in the desert with thee.’”

  He closed his eyes, overcome by his feelings, which were of himself ever exiled from Love, in the luminous and tender vision of the spirit of Theodora, whom he had not seen since the christening of the boy two years before.

  Hetty came into the room. “Oh, Hughie, you have been making Sonnie sad, look, there is a tear on his cheek. He is so easily upset, and must conserve his strength. He isn’t very strong, you know.”

  “My dear sister, I merely recited James Hogg’s ‘Skylark’, and drew a tear for beauty. He will thank me later on, for opening his eyes at an early age to the true values of the world.”

  “Yes, Hughie dear, please don’t let what I said upset you, There, I was perhaps a little over-anxious.” Phillip’s eyes were now eagerly fixed on a paper bag she was opening. Out came a stale bun, one of four for a penny. Not only was this an economy, but they were better for the digestion, Dickie said. The boy seized the bun, and began to munch it.

  “What do you say, Sonnie?”

  The boy gulped, and said slowly and clearly, “Danke schön, mummie.” Hughie laughed. “By Jove, he’s got his wits about him, Hett!” Phillip laughed too. With bright eyes he repeated, “Danke schön, mummie p’e!”

  “Minnie taught him to say it.”

  “What precocity! I’ll put him in my act. The Ning-a-ning man, old Loos’am, Dick the Melancholy Lamp-post—dressed as such—playing the ’cello in the shades—Good God, what an original act!—then the Spirit of the Streets, of joy and heartbreak!—Gonzalo! The Quick-change man with violin, and Sonnie just to watch and register what we put over the footlights. He can be dressed as a monkey on the barrel organ; we’ll be billed as The Lost Spirits! Lost Spirits in search of a home in the Temple of Art! Don’t say anything now, I must make some notes.”