London's Heart: A Novel. Farjeon Benjamin Leopold
negligence; and as she looks at you from behind a fan, you catch just a glimpse of laughing eyes. On the left-hand side of the mantelshelf she is dressed in the costume of a century ago, in brocaded silk dress, and with black beauty-spots on her cheeks; she wears a white wig, and, in the act of curtseying, looks at you saucily and demurely, coquetting the while with a white handkerchief which she holds in her fingers. The stove is hidden by an ornament of paper flowers, the colours and arrangement of which are more artistic than the majority of those sold in the streets. There is one singular peculiarity about the furniture in the room: everything movable is on wheels. The chairs, the table, a footstool, the very ornaments on the mantelshelf-all on wheels made expressly for them. There is no carpet on the floor; but the chairs make no noise as they are moved, for the wheels (made of box or deal, according to requirement) are covered with leather. Even the flower-pots on the window-sill have wheels, and the old man is at present occupied in making wheels for a work-box, which it is not difficult to guess belongs to the young girl whose portrait hangs above the roses. He works noiselessly and slowly, and with great care. It is evident that he is engaged on a labour of love. He handles the wood as if it were sensitive; he looks at his handiwork fondly, and holds it up to the light and examines it with loving interest. Once he rises and stands before the mantelshelf, and gazes with a tender light in his eyes at the picture of the young girl. Then he returns to his tools, and resumes his work. A slight sound disturbs him, and he pauses in his work to listen. As he listens he raises his hand to his ear, and directs his eyes towards a screen, which makes, as it were, a second apartment of the cosiest corner of the room. Something that the old man loves lies behind this screen, which is so arranged that the pictures on the mantelshelf and the roses and the ornaments of paper flowers can be seen by the person lying there. A pale, thin, bent old man is he: not bent by age, but by constant stooping; with long hair-a fringe of it only round his head-nearly white, and with a thoughtful expression on his face that would well become a student; which this old man is not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Among the decorations on the mantelshelf is the smallest of clocks, in a case of wood, carved most likely by Swiss hands. As the old man sits and works, a click from the Swiss clock warns him that another hour is nearly gone. "Five minutes to nine," he whispers, and he steps softly towards the screen, and moves it so that, when he returns to his seat, he can see what it has before hidden from his sight. With the exception of the click, and presently of the striking of the hour in thin bell-notes, not a sound is heard in the room; for the old man has list slippers on his feet. The shifting of the screen has disclosed a single iron bedstead, on which lies a woman asleep. She is careworn and middle-aged; and when her features are composed, a likeness may be discerned in them to the picture of the girl on the mantelshelf. But at the present moment her lips wreathe distressfully, and an expression of pain rests upon her face.
So, in this quiet room, the sick woman sleeping and the old man working, the minutes pass swiftly, and the click of the little Swiss clock is heard again. Five minutes to ten. The old man, who has been growing restless, and who has several times gone to the bed to see if the woman is awake, grows more restless still as he hears the last click. "Alfred promised to be here by this time," he says, with an anxious look at the door as he lays his work aside. On a little table near the bed are two medicine bottles, one large and one small, which, with their labels tied nattily round their necks, look ridiculously like clergymen with their bands on. The old man takes one of these medicine bottles, and reads the directions: "Two tablespoonfuls to be given immediately she awakes, and after that, the same quantity every four hours."
"And she won't take it from any other hand than mine or Lily's," he muses. "If Alfred doesn't come home, and she doesn't wake, I must get somebody to go for Lily."
As he stands debating with himself what is best to be done, he hears a tap at the door. It heralds the appearance of a young woman, one of the lodgers in the upper part of the house. She has her hat and shawl on, and a basket is on her arm.
"Ah, Mrs. Podmore," he says abstractedly, "will you step inside?"
"No, thank you, Mr. Wheels," she answers; "I'm in a hurry. How's your daughter to-night?"
"Not so well, not so well," he says. "She's wandering a little, I think. The doctor was here in the afternoon, and I could tell by his face that he thought she was worse. And I have to give her her medicine directly she wakes."
"I'm sorry she's not well. We've all got our trials, Mr. Wheels! My sister's little boy's down with the fever too. I'm going to take a run round to see how he is."
"Not serious, I hope?"
"I don't know," replies Mrs. Podmore gravely; "he seems to me to be sinking-but we're all in God Almighty's hands. One thinks of one's own, Mr. Wheels, at such times. Thank God, our little one's upstairs, asleep, safe and well. But we feared we was going to lose her in the spring, and I never see a child struck down but I think of her."
"I often think of little Polly, too," says the old man sympathisingly, "and of how near she was to death. Do you remember how Lily grieved?"
"Remember it!" exclaims Mrs. Podmore, with grateful enthusiasm. "I shall remember it to my dying day. What I should have done without her I don't know. When Polly was a-laying there so quiet and solemn and white, and my heart was fit to break, Lily used to come and cheer me up. She was the only comfort I had, bless her kind heart and pretty face!"
"Yes, yes," cries the old man eagerly; "and how Polly took to her after that! and how fond she was of my girl! But who could help being that-who could help being that?"
"I had enough to do, what with looking after Jim and Polly," continues the homely woman. "What with keeping the place clean and sweet, and making the things the doctor ordered, and mending Jim's clothes, and getting his dinner and tea ready for him every morning before he went out; and what with him coming home dead-beat and worried with anxiety about Polly, I wonder how I ever got through with it. As for doctors, my blood curdles again when I see them looking so steady and cold at somebody that's a-dying before their very eyes. Our Polly had been abed nigh upon three weeks, when the doctor comes and looks at her and feels her pulse, and shakes his head. My eyes was never off his face for a second; and when I saw him shake his head, I turned so faint that I thought I should have dropped. He was going away without a word, when I stopped him in the passage. I tried to speak, but I couldn't, and I thought it was cruel of him to be so particular about buttoning his gloves, while I was in that state of agitation that I could hardly stand. 'Don't take on so, Mrs. Podmore,' he said; 'you've done your best, and that ought to be a consolation to you.' As if anything could have been a consolation to me! I asked him if he couldn't give me a bit of hope; but he shook his head again, and said, 'While there's life there's hope.' I knew what that meant, and I had to catch hold of the banisters to steady myself. Then I went and sat by Polly's bed, and began to cry. It seemed to me that she was gone from us already, and that home wasn't home any more. And I was frightened when I thought of Jim. His heart's bound up in Polly, you see, Mr. Wheels; they used to have quite a little play between them of a morning. She'd creep close to him in bed, and put her arms round his neck, and there they'd lay a-cuddling one another for half an hour before he had to get up. When he had had his breakfast and had kissed her a dozen times, and was out in the passage going to work, she'd call him back and make fun of him, and they'd laugh together that cheery like that it did my heart good to hear 'em. Sometimes she wouldn't call him, and he'd wait in the passage. She knew he was waiting, and she'd set up in bed, with a cunning little smile on her lips, and her head bent forward, and her pretty hand raised, listening. He knew what was going on inside that little head of hers, and he'd stamp his feet and pretend to go downstairs. Then she'd call out to him, 'Father, father!' and he'd say, 'Here I am, Pollypod!' and they'd have another romp together, until he said, 'Now I must be off, Pollypod!' and away he'd run, waking half the people in the house with his clatter. I was always easy in my mind about Jim when he went away like that. I thought of all this after the doctor gave Polly up, and I was frightened. Jim was very late that night, and Lily was with me when he came home. 'How's my little Pollypod?' he said; but he didn't wait for an answer-he saw it in my face. I thought he'd have gone mad; but we got him quieted after a bit, and Lily sat up with me that night watching. Well, it was a little past four o'clock in the morning, and Jim was asleep, and Lily and me was watching and fearing, watching and fearing! Ah! it's an anxious time that watching of a night, when you fear you're a-going to lose something