CHAPTER XX

AN UNEXPECTED CHEQUE LEADS TO PLANS OF TRAVEL, AND NAOMI AND I ACCEPT A RESPONSIBILITY

"I don't suppose you've heard the news," I said, as we settled down to our soup.

"Do you mean about the Traffic Bill?" said Alderley.

"Or Notts and Yorkshire?" said Lionel.

"Or the Queen of Spain?" said my sister.

"Or John's portrait of Mrs. Grundy?" said Drusilla.

"Or Mr. Bemerton's latest find?" said Naomi.

"No," I said, "none of these. You couldn't really have guessed if you had gone on all night. The news is, that I am going to take you on the Continent for a month--as many of you as want to go."

Naomi spoke first. "But, Kent," she said, "how----?"

"Hush!" I said. Then I took my pocketbook out of my pocket, opened it, extracted a slip of paper, unfolded it, and laid it on the table before her. "There," I said, "is a cheque for £483 10s. 3d. It came to me this morning all unexpectedly, being the payment of a debt which I had long since given up hope of ever receiving. In other words, it is sheer profit, like all repaid loans.

"If we can all go to the Continent for a month on that amount," I continued, "let us do so. If not, let us go for three weeks or a fortnight. But I intend to take some of you, if not all.

"The question is," I went on, "where shall we go? We must debate the point with great care, and the majority will decide. I, I may say at once, have no preference. All I want to do is go to the Continent for a month and pay everything, provided of course that some one else will carry the purse. That I could never do."

"Dollie would love it," said Drusilla. "Besides, he can talk French like a----"

"Like a french polisher," said Lionel, who has a turn for mechanical wit.

"Ah!" I said, "you lean towards France."

"Does he know Italian?" asked my step-sister.

"We seem to be crossing the Alps," I said.

"But, my dear Kent," Naomi remarked very earnestly, "you don't really mean to spend all that money on a holiday?"

"Why not," I asked, "if it comes from a clear sky? Let us consider it manna and quails, and consume it."

"I certainly should not dream of going," Naomi replied, "unless you promised at least to halve the amount and use the other half for some other purpose--helping some of my poor people, for example."

I threw the cheque to Naomi. "There," I said, "put it in the bank, and when we are ready to go, give us exactly half of it, and we will stay away until it is spent or we are all tired of seeing each other at _table d'hôte_. The other half you must do with exactly as you will."

"You dear thing!" Naomi cried.

All through dinner we discussed the merits of Continental resorts.

We began with France. Lionel suggested Trouville; but his sisters would have none of it.

"Then I can't go," he said. "I couldn't possibly be away for more than a few days until the season closes. We've got several matches yet."

Drusilla also remarked that she did not want to be away for so long as a month, but would not explain why.

Alderley wanted Brixen. He had heard so much of it from a Judge. No one else had heard of it at all, and he became very plaintive about money foolishly flung away on the education of the young. "Brixen," he said, "is in the Tyrol--a mountainous district of Austria."

After a short sharp passage with Drusilla he admitted to having first met the name and fame of Brixen only a fortnight ago.

My sister voted for the Juras. She had seen a picture in the Academy, of a valley of wild flowers there, by MacWhirter, and she had always longed to visit them.

But against Switzerland rose the universal voice.

Norway was excluded on account of the sea voyage; Rome for its heat; Spain for ignorance of the language and (on Mrs. Wynne's account) prevalence of anarchists and bombs; the Black Forest for its want of civilised apparatus; the Tyrol for its steepnesses.

And then Naomi hit the nail on the head. "Venice," she said.

Of course.

Later in the evening Dollie Heathcote came in. He had looked round the dancing rooms to which he had been invited, had disapproved, and, disapproving, had with a bachelor's lofty privileges done what he called a guy.

"Besides," he said, not in excuse, for he admits to no errors, but in further explanation of a perfectly rational line of conduct, "there were crowds of men over--oceans."

"What do you know of Venice?" Naomi asked him.

"Venice," he said, "I know all about Venice. It is a suburb of New York, the streets are flooded, and there is nothing to eat except for mosquitoes, and they eat you."

"Very good," I said.

"Don't encourage the ass," said Lionel.

"Very good," I said, "but now be practical."

"Oh, as for that," said Dollie, "I know nothing of Venice except that the wise are said to stay at the Lido, where there is ripping bathing and no mosquitoes, and go over to Venice when they want to. It is quite close--much closer than the Isle of Wight is to Portsmouth and much jollier. I hate the Isle of Wight."

"Will you come with us?" I asked him. "As my guest?"

But he could not. He had arranged a series of visits for the Long Vacation, and he obviously wanted to pay them, or he would have accepted my invitation instantly. His duty always lies along the primrosiest path.

"Then it is you who will have to pay the bills and tip the waiters," I said to the K.C.

"Alderley loves that," said his wife.

And so it was settled: we were to go to Venice and go very soon.

I wrote to Miss Gold to tell her of the projected journey, and she replied instantly, asking me to come down at once and to be sure to bring Naomi with me.

She received us very warmly and got to business almost instantly.

"I have been making a new will," she said, "and I want you to be my executors--you, Kent, and Miss Wynne. It is, I know, unusual for one to ask one who is outwardly a total stranger, as Miss Wynne may feel herself to be, to take such a post; but lying here and thinking, I seem to know you so very well, my dear, quite as well as I know many people whom I see, and I want you to humour an old sick woman who has so long been a friend of your friend Mr. Falconer.

"Besides," Miss Gold continued, "my will is not a very personal affair. There will be no grasping relations to deal with. I merely want to leave the money in trust to you two, to go on with certain schemes that I should not wish at once to be interrupted just because I was no longer lying here as usual. You will be business people--that is all."

"Tell us," I said, "what some of the schemes are."

"Well," she began, "for one thing I have a seaside home for London children--a mixture of seaside and country. It is in Sussex. I bought an old farmhouse and windmill, about a mile inland, and added to them until we can accommodate twenty children and three or four people to look after them. The farm goes on all the time, but the mill is idle. They play in that. There are very good sands there, I am told, and woods too. It seems to be an ideal spot. The children go down in twenties for ten days each from April till the middle of October--that means about four hundred children."

"But how do you choose the children?" I asked.

"Well, that is of course a difficulty. A Poor Law Inspector in Clerkenwell helps me. They are all Clerkenwell children. One must be local or one is lost. He tells me the best cases.

"I have good helpers in Sussex," she continued. "The farmer's wife was my father's cook. She and two or three girls do the house work. There is also a lady in charge with some assistants. It all goes perfectly smoothly.

"That is one thing. Then there is my home of rest for horses," she added. "That might be transferred to Sussex, since this house will be sold. For another thing, I have got a paper."

"What kind of a paper?"

"Oh, a straightforward critical paper that tries to see the truth and tell it. It's rather expensive because we won't have any advertisements, but I don't mind that."

I began to see daylight. "I think I know it," I said. "Is it _The Balance_?"

"Yes. Do you think it is worth the money?"

"Oh yes," I said, "quite."

"And Mr. Dabney?"

"He's all right. At any rate, you'll never get a better man."

"He really does seem to have no axe to grind," Miss Gold remarked.

"No; except the angels'," I said. "His fault or foible," I added, "is a tendency to scold; but that is, of course, a defect of a quality, and after all it is to a large extent mitigated by the other contributions to the paper by gentler hands. Naomi's brother writes for it," I said.

"I should want," Miss Gold said, "to leave you absolute discretion as to keeping these things on or stopping them whenever you thought best. A time comes when the usefulness of almost all charities seems to be exhausted. The difficulty, of course, is to keep one's helpers keen. The transmission of enthusiasm is the hardest of all operations.

"And then," she continued, "there would be a sum for minor needs. Every one knows of small wants--'deserving cases,' as the phrase is. Mr. Falconer has told me of two people I should like to do something for, although it is a question, as Mr. Trist says, if it is possible to help failures. I mean that poor old cataloguer at Bemerton's and the waterman at the corner. I believe that one ought to be able to think out something even for them; but I know how difficult it is, because I have tried. I have given just such a man as the waterman an overcoat, but he pawned it at once.

"And I have a great belief, rarely shaken," Miss Gold went on, "in the value of surprise gifts. I lie here longing to project five-pound notes, ten-pound notes, even twenty-pound notes (if there are such things) on to the breakfast-tables of poor clerks' wives who know what a holiday is but cannot take one, and brave typists who live on tea and bread and butter, and ladies in reduced circumstances who retain a little vanity but have no means to gratify it."

"Oh yes!" Naomi exclaimed, with shining eyes.

"But how can I learn about such needs, lying here as I do?" said my dear generous Agnes. "One can apply money well in that way only after making inquiries and moving much among people, observing and observing. But you two will have to do it," she added triumphantly, "because I am setting apart a sum the interest of which is solely to be used in that way."

I gasped, and Naomi looked at me and laughed.

"But tell me," Miss Gold said to Naomi, "something about your poor people."

And Naomi kept us laughing by her droll descriptions--laughing and sympathising too. Most of her stories unite the comic and the pathetic in perfectly equal proportions. There is an old lady in reduced circumstances in North London, for example, who lives in a large house (her own) with one small servant, and lets a few rooms. She was lately, when Naomi called on her, out of lodgers and all alone, her little servant being on a brief holiday. "But aren't you very lonely?" Naomi asked. "I am, rather," she admitted. "In fact, I don't know what I should do if it wasn't for this"--pointing to a pill-box at her side--"but I hear it moving now and then, and it seems to be company." The pill-box contained a jumping bean.

Just before we left, Naomi went into the paddock to take to the horses a bag of little carrots which she had brought on purpose.

"What a dear girl!" said Miss Gold.

"Yes," I said.

We were silent for a little while.

"She should marry," then said Miss Gold. "Some man much older than herself. What about Herbert Trist?"

Why did I feel so annoyed?

"Trist," I said, "Trist is not likely to marry any one."

"We must bring them together," Miss Gold replied.

"I don't think that is at all necessary," I said. "I hate match-making or any kind of interference with people."

Miss Gold smiled.

"Well," she said, as Naomi returned, "good-bye. I am so glad I can count on you. Now I can die more happily."