“If you don’t mind, Mr. Owen,” he said. “I forgot to tell you. There’s a lit’ery gent boarding with me in the room above, and he can’t bear to be disturbed.”
A muffled stamping from the ceiling bore out his words.
“Writing a book, he is,” continued Mr. Dorman. “He caught young George a clip over the ear-‘ole yesterday for blowing his trumpet on the stairs. Gave him sixpence afterwards, and said he’d skin him if he ever did it again. So, if you don’t mind-”
“Oh, all right,” said Owen. “Who is he?”
“Gentleman of the name of Prosser.”
Owen could not recollect having come across any work by anyone of that name; but he was not a wide reader; and, whether the man above was a celebrity or not, he was entitled to quiet.
“I never heard of him,” he said, “but that’s no reason why I should disturb him. Let him rip. I’ll cut out the musical effects in future.”
The days passed smoothly by. The literary man remained invisible, though occasionally audible, tramping the floor in the frenzy of composition. Nor, until the last day of his visit, did Owen see old Mrs. Dorman.
That she was not unaware of his presence in the house, however, was indicated on the last morning. He was smoking an after-breakfast pipe at the open window and waiting for the dog-cart that was to take him to the station, when George, the son of the house, entered.
George stood in the doorway, grinned, and said:
“Farsezjerligranmatellyerforchbythercards?”
“Eh?” said Owen.
The youth repeated the word.
“Once again.”
On the second repetition light began to creep in. A boyhood spent in the place, added to this ten days’ stay, had made Owen something of a linguist.
“Father says would I like grandma to do what?”
“Tell yer forch’n by ther cards.”
“Where is she?”
“Backyarnder.”
Owen followed him into the kitchen, where he found Mr. Dorman, the farmer, and, seated at the table, fumbling with a pack of cards, an old woman, whom he remembered well.
“Mother wants to tell your fortune,” said Mr. Dorman, in a hoarse aside. “She always will tell visitors’ fortunes. She told Mr. Prosser’s, and he didn’t half like it, because she said he’d be engaged in two months and married inside the year. He said wild horses wouldn’t make him do it.”
“She can tell me that if she likes. I sha’n’t object.”
“Mother, here’s Mr. Owen.”
“I seed him fast enough,” said the old woman, briskly. “Shuffle, an’ cut three times.”
She then performed mysterious manœuvres with the cards.
“I see pots o’ money,” announced the sibyl.
“If she says it, it’s there right enough,” said her son.
“She means my bonus,” said Owen. “But that’s only ten pounds. And I lose it if I’m late twice more before Christmas.”
“It’ll come sure enough.”
“Pots,” said the old woman, and she was still mumbling the encouraging word when Owen left the kitchen and returned to the sitting-room.
He laughed rather ruefully. At that moment he could have found a use for pots o’ money.
He walked to the window, and looked out. It was a glorious morning. The heat-mist was dancing over the meadow beyond the brook, and from the farmyard came the liquid charawks of care-free fowls. It seemed wicked to leave these haunts of peace for London on such a day.
An acute melancholy seized him. Absently, he sat down at the piano. The prejudices of literary Mr. Prosser had slipped from his mind. Softly at first, then gathering volume as the spirit of the song gripped him, he began to sing “Asthore.” He became absorbed.
He had just, for the sixth time, won through to “Iyam-ah waiting for-er theeee-yass-thorre,” and was doing some intricate three-chord work preparatory to starting over again, when a loaf of bread whizzed past his ear. It missed him by an inch, and crashed against a plaster statuette of the Infant Samuel on the top of the piano.
It was a standard loaf, containing eighty per cent. of the semolina, and it practically wiped the Infant Samuel out of existence. At the same moment, at his back, there sounded a loud, wrathful snort.