CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH THERE IS TROUBLE IN THE HOUSE OF WILES OWING TO A HUSBAND ONCE AGAIN GETTING HIS OWN WAY

Naomi has had a letter from Mrs. Wiles saying that she was in trouble and badly in need of advice, and would Mrs. Falconer be so kind as to call. We therefore went round in the afternoon and found the millionairess in tears.

"Wiles will be here directly," she said. "He's just gone out for some medicine."

"No one's seriously ill, I hope?" I said.

"Well, I don't know," she replied. "But you remember, ma'am, what you said about adopting a child. We talked that over and over, and Wiles didn't seem to care about it at first, and then all of a sudden he got brighter and thought it was a good idea. Only, 'Leave it to me,' he kept saying; 'I'll do it.' Well, I know Wiles has his wits about him most times, but when it comes to adopting a child, why, there I think that the choice ought to have been mine. It's woman's work, anyway, especially as it's me who would have to look after it, or so I thought. But Wiles, he only laughed, funny like, and wouldn't hear of it. 'Leave it to me,' he kep' on saying. And what do you think? Yesterday the baby came; and what do you think it is? Why, not a Christian at all, but a baby chimpanzee. I'll admit it's not a monkey; that's something gained; but I don't know how to hold me head up, all the same. Look at the degrasion of it! What can the neighbours say? Because of course they'll think it's just a monkey. And in our position! Here we are, come into money and moving into a nice house, with a servant, and getting rid of the Zoo and all its fleas once and for ever, as I thought, and now to have it all beginning again and another of those creatures brought into the very house where we eat and sleep: that is if ever I, for one, will sleep again! Never did I think to see my own back-kitchen a menagerie."

At this moment Wiles came in, looking a little self-conscious, but important too. "Ah," he said, "I can see what the missis has been saying, but don't you take any notice of her. She'll be all right. Come and see my Lou," and he led us to the back-kitchen, where a timid and distrustful chimpanzee huddled in a corner. "That's her, that's my Lou," he said. "That's our adopted child, ma'am. She's got a touch of bronchitis, I'm afraid, and I've been getting some medicine. But she ought to be all right here, with me to look after her. Why, I feel another man already. Something to do again."

Lou was a picture of melancholy and suspicion as her new father poured out a spoonful of the linctus; but it was syrupy and she took it with pleasure. "There," he said, as she finished the dose, "my little girl isn't going to die of pneumonia. She's going to get strong and learn some good tricks, isn't she?"

"Tricks!" said Mrs. Wiles. "You know what that means: shaking hands, eating with a spoon, pretending to read the paper. Nothing worth doing. Nothing like a nice little orphan girl who would be a companion and a pleasure to us and go to a cinema now and then. I'm so disappointed."

"Well," I said, "there's time. It's only Wiles having his adopted child first. Your turn next. That's fair, isn't it, Wiles?"

"We'll leave it at that for the present," said Wiles, pointing to an illuminated card on the wall. "That's our motto," he added.

I am always attracted by stories of what might be called beneficent error, and this gesture of Wiles's gave me a perfect example. To my eyes and to ninety-nine observers out of a hundred the device, which ran thus,

[Illustration: NOT NOW]

represented nothing in the world but the text, "No Cross, no Crown." Judge, then, of my astonishment when Mrs. Wiles supplemented her husband's remark by saying: "Yes, we've had a lot of comfort out of those words in our day. 'Not now.' Later, it'll be all right. There's a better time coming. But it isn't quite ripe yet, so pull yourselves together and wait cheerfully. Wiles had it given him by an aunt of his, who was a very pious body, and it always puzzled us why she shouldn't have sent something more religious. But, as it happens, nothing religious could have helped us more, could it, Wiles? 'Not now.'"

Naturally I said nothing to them about it, but I have been wondering since what difference it would have made had they known all along that "No Cross, no Crown" was the true reading. Once they accepted the full meaning of the phrase, none, I suppose; for "No Cross, no Crown" and "Not now" come to mean the same thing in the end. But it is an amusing confusion, and not the least amusing part of it is the circumstance that two poets at any rate have toiled to combine words that would convey the same ideas, while all the time such a commonplace and terse locution as "Not now" could have done it all. For what more does Pope's famous couplet say:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast, Man never is, but always to be, blest?

or "Rabbi Ben Ezra's" beautiful line:

Grow old along with me: the best is yet to be?