CHAPTER I

ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS AND FINDS A HOME IN WESTMINSTER

"Mr. Falconer," said Naomi to Mrs. Duckie, "wants quiet, clean rooms and the simplest cooking. Rarely anything but breakfast, and that very light. It must be in this neighbourhood, so as to be near Queen Anne's Gate."

Mrs. Duckie said that hers were the quietest rooms in London and almost the nearest to Queen Anne's Gate: certainly the nearest quiet rooms. As for her cooking, although she had of course in her time served up for dinner parties of ten or a dozen, when she was with Canon Lyme, she was famous for her small happetising meals too. If Mr. Dabney was only up and dressed we might ask him.

Mr. Dabney had the rooms above mine--or, I should say, above those which (as I could see) Naomi intended should be mine in about five minutes--but being a gentleman on the press who kept very late hours, he did not appear till nearly lunch time;--all gentlemen who use their heads, said Mrs. Duckie, needing their full eight hours, if not nine. As for herself, she could do with six or seven; but Duckie wanted his full eight, and had them too, coming as he did from a sleepy stock. She had known him of a Saturday night when he had slep' for a good ten.

"I also like to get up late," I said, "but that is owing to my misfortune in being unable to sleep well. I suffer very badly from insomnia."

"Yes," said Naomi, "and that is one reason why I brought you first to these rooms, because of the advantage of living over a second-hand bookseller's shop. Don't you see that there will always be something to read? When you can't sleep," she hurried on, "and you are tired of all your own books, as one then is, you have only to get up, light a candle, slip on your dressing-gown" (Naomi's mind is all hopefulness and practical method), "and go down to the shop for as many others as you want. Because of course you will become friends with the bookseller directly. You always do."

"All very well; but how if the bookseller only rents the ground floor and basement and lives four miles away in Harringay with the key under his pillow? which as a matter of fact he does, for Mrs.--er--Mrs.--told me so while you were looking at the bathroom. What then, Naomi?"

"Oh, I don't think anything of that," she said: "why, he'll give you a duplicate key within a week. And look," she went on, "what splendid cupboards those are, and it's a Lambert grate too, and it's known that they throw the heat right out into the room" (Naomi has no scepticism in her, and she remembers so many advertisements), "and it is so convenient to have the bedroom and the bathroom leading out of each other. It is a good bath, too: the hot water comes at once."

"How long does it run hot?" I asked.

"Dear Kent," she cried, now as completely on the side of the landlady as if they were in partnership, "you are so suspicious. It keeps hot all the time. I tried it."

Mrs. Duckie corroborated. "There isn't another house within a mile," she said, "which lets rooms that has a bathroom like ours. It was put in by the landlord when he thought of living here himself, and then of course he had his accident and married the nurse and settled down at Hendon for life. And though I wish him nothing but happiness, it's an accident that I've found it in my heart to be very thankful for, laying in that beautiful bath of a Saturday night."

"After the books and the bathroom," Naomi broke in, "the best thing is the corner position. The windows look right along two streets. Think how interesting that will be sometimes. Because I shall put your table in the corner, so that you can look up from your reading and see out of both equally well."

I mentioned something about draughts.

"Oh no," said Naomi; "there will be india-rubber piping put all round, and sandbags over the cracks."

"They are such a violent red," I said.

"Yes, of course, when you buy them," said Naomi, who thinks ahead by instinct, "but I shall cover them for you. I saw some stuff at Libnett's the other day. I think purple is the colour for this room, and blue for the bedroom. Yes, purple and blue. I will send for a book of patterns at once, and we can choose them to-morrow morning when the light is good."

"But the 'Goat and Compasses' opposite," I said, determined to be as difficult as I could, "isn't that rather near?"

"Not a better conducted house in London," Mrs. Duckie at once broke in. "The landlord and the landlady are as nice a couple as God Almighty ever set behind a bar. He was butler to Lord Latimer, and she was the cook, and his Lordship left them each five hundred pounds. They've only been there eight months, and already the place is so changed you wouldn't know it. The difference between it now and what it used to be!" Mrs. Duckie raised her hands. "I assure you, miss," she said, "that if you had brought your--your----"

"Grandfather," I suggested.

"Oh no, sir!" said Mrs. Duckie. "What a thing to say! Grandfather indeed! Why, you're in your prime."

"Of course," said Naomi, "what rubbish you talk!"

"As I was saying," Mrs. Duckie continued, "if you had brought him to these rooms a year ago, and implored me on your bended knees to let him take them at twice the rent, I should have said no. My conscience wouldn't have permitted me to let them to a refined gentleman with insomnia and scholarly ways of life and relations in Queen Anne's Gate. I should have said no. But now--why, I might be living in the Little Cloisters at the Abbey again, it's so respectable and quiet."

"The sign of the 'Goat and Compasses,'" I remarked, "is said to be derived from the words, 'God encompasseth us."

"I shouldn't be surprised," said Mrs. Duckie, who at that moment was called away.

"Then you insist on my taking these rooms," I said to Naomi.

"No, Kent, not insist," she answered. "But they're really nice rooms. And central too. You've only got to cross the bridge and you're all among your Clubs and everything else, and such a nice walk to lunch through the park among the ducks and cormorants. I should be miserable if you were in Jermyn Street with no compulsory nice walk at all. And you're close to us and the Stores."

"Yes," I said, "and if ever I choose to go into Parliament, which any one may do to-day, how convenient! And how easy to become a Roman Catholic, with the new Cathedral so handy! And I might buy one of the Thames steamboats, which I am told are going very cheap, and keep it at Westminster Bridge."

Naomi laughed. She laughs at me now and then, not because she thinks I am particularly funny, but because she knows it makes me happier to think that I am thought funny. For Naomi takes things as they come, and, like most women, has no need of jokes. Brightness and sense appeal to her more than all fantasy, wit, or cleverness. People who think ahead are bound to be rather automatically receptive, and as a matter of fact her mind was already turning over the patterns; but the undercurrent of sweetness always running in her nature prompted her little kindly laugh. Deceptive, no doubt, but innocently so. A gentle hypocrisy is not only the basis but the salt of civilised life.

"The only objection left," I said, "is the name of the landlady. Do I really understand you to say that it is Duckie?"

Naomi laughed outright. This struck her as being really funny. "But, my dear Kent," she said, "you would not refuse good rooms because of the landlady's name?"

"Oh yes, I would," I replied. "That's exactly what I would do."

"Not when all you have to do," said Naomi, "is to call her something else? One of our parlourmaids was named Victoria, but we called her Jane. You could call Mrs. Duckie Landlady or Housekeeper."

At this moment Mrs. Duckie returned, and I took the rooms without another word.

"Mr. Bemerton will be very pleased," she said. "Mr. Bemerton has the book shop downstairs. He asks me every day if I have a tenant yet, and he has been hoping it would be some one who is fond of reading."

As a matter of fact (although I did not tell Naomi so, wishing her to think that it was all her doing), as a matter of fact, I had made up my mind directly I saw the book shop underneath, that unless there were very imposing obstacles I should make these rooms my home. My feet have always led me naturally to second-hand booksellers' shops, and after thirty years of exile in such a bookless city as Buenos Ayres, the idea of being so close to one of these little terrestrial heavens was too much for me. Besides, think of the name--Bemerton--with the suggestion of holy Mr. Herbert in it.

That was my fate, I knew swiftly (as one does know his fate at fifty-five). I was to live over Bemerton's.

Having arranged to send in some paperhangers and painters at once, we bade Mrs. Duckie farewell and descended the stairs to the street; but I would not depart until I had bought a book for luck. Being a profound believer in the humour if not the reason of chance, I told Naomi that from the first shelf on the left hand that came as high as my heart I would buy two books: for her, the twenty-ninth book from the doorway (her age is twenty-nine); for me, the fifty-fifth;--no matter what the subject and no matter what the price.

And what do you think they were? Naomi's by curious and very pleasant fortune was _Walton's Lives_ (with holy Mr. Herbert of Bemerton shedding a gentle light over all); and mine was a fat volume in a yellow paper cover, lying on its side, for which I had to pay two solid English pounds.

Naomi's face was a picture of disapproval as I produced the money; for she is no believer in fate and no supporter of supine acquiescence, wise receptivity, and all the rest of it: Naomi believes in self-help and courage and in getting one's books from the London Library. But when she saw the title her expression changed from disapproval to positive grief, for it ran thus: _A Chinese Biographical Dictionary_, by Herbert A. Giles, London and Shanghai, 1898.

"My dear Kent," she cried, "how very wrong of you to do these silly superstitious things! Whatever can you find to interest you in Chinese biography?"

"My dear young lady," said the bookseller, "you make a great mistake. The gentleman has bought what is at once one of the best and the least known books in this shop. If he looks at it to-night, however casually, and does not agree with me, I will cheerfully give him two pounds again for it to-morrow morning."

Directly Naomi heard this she brightened again--for was there not a bargain in the air?--and off we trotted to Queen Anne's Gate in very good humour, talking furniture and decoration all the way, with a word as to the promising and unusual business habits of Mr. Bemerton, and a few remarks from me on the favourite topic of the kindness of chance when one really gives her her head and refrains from even the shadow of authority.

To this Naomi replied that she thought, all things considered, that I had better get most of the things at the Stores rather than go all the way to Tottenham Court Road.