old squance was the undertaker, but in the balmy, healthy, equable air of tamborough undertaking was not a thriving trade; its opportunities were but an ornamental adjunct to his more vital occupation of builder. even so those old splendid stone-built cottages never needed repairs, or if they did squance didn’t do them. storms wouldn’t visit tamborough, fires didn’t occur, the hand of decay was, if anything, more deliberate than the hand of time itself, and no newcomer, loving the old houses so much, ever wanted to build a new one: so mrs. squance had to sell hard-looking bullseyes and stiff-looking fruit in a hard, stiff-looking shop. also knitting needles and, in their time of the year, garden seeds. squance was a meek person whom you would never have credited with heroic tendencies; nevertheless, with no more romantic background than a coffin or two, a score of scaffold poles, and sundry hods and shovels, he had acquired in a queer, but still not unusual, way the repute of a lion-slayer. mrs. squance was not so meek, she was not meek at all, she was ambitious—but vainly so. her ambitions secured their fulfilment only in her nocturnal dreams, but in that sphere they were indeed triumphant and she was satisfied. the most frequent setting of her unconscious imagination happened to be a tiny modern flat in which she and old ben seemed to be living in harmony and luxury. it was a delightful flat, very high up—that was the proper situation for a flat,244 mind you, just under the roof—with stairs curling down, and down, and down till it made you giddy to think of them. the kitchen, well, really mrs. squance could expatiate endlessly on that and the tiny corner place with two wash-basins in it and room enough to install a bath if you went in for that kind of thing. best of all was the sitting-room in front, looking into a street so very far below that mrs. squance declared she felt as if she had been sitting in a balloon. here mrs. squance, so she dreamed, would sit and browse. she didn’t have to look at ordinary things like trees and mud and other people’s windows. that was what made it so nice, mrs. squance declared. she had instead a vista of roofs and chimneys, beautiful telephone standards, and clouds. the people, too, who walked far down beneath were always unrecognizable; a multitude of hat crowns seemed to collect her gaze, linked with queer movements, right, left, right, left, of knees and boots, though sometimes she would be lucky enough to observe a very fat man, just a glimpse perhaps of his watch-guard lying like a chain of oceanic islands across a scholastic globe. in the way of dreams she knew the street by the name of lather lane. it was cobbled with granite setts. there was a barber’s shop at one corner and a depot for foreign potatoes and bananas at another. that flat was so constantly the subject of her dream visitations that she came to invest it with a romantic reality, to regard it as an ultimate real possession lying fortuitously somewhere, at no very great remove, in some quarter she might actually, any day now, luckily stumble across.
245
and it was in that very flat she beheld mr. squance’s heroism. it seemed to be morning in her dream, early; it must have been early. she and squance were at breakfast when what should walk deliberately and astoundingly into the room but a lion. mrs. squance, never having seen a lion before, took it to be a sheepdog, and she shouted, “go out, you dirty thing!” waving a threatening hand towards it. but the animal did not go out; it pranced up to mrs. squance in a genial way, seized her admonishing hand and playfully tried to bite it off. really! mr. squance had risen to his startled feet shouting “lion! lion!” and then mrs. squance realized that she had to contend with a monster that kept swelling bigger and bigger before her very eyes, until it seemed that it would never be able to go out of that door again. it had a tremendous head and mane, with whiskers on its snout as stiff as knitting needles, and claws like tenpenny nails; but its tail was the awfullest thing, long and very flexible, with a bush of hair at the end just like a mop, which it wagged about, smashing all sorts of things.
“ben,” said mrs. squance, “'ave you a pistol?”
“no, i ’ave not,” said ben.
“then we’re done,” she had declared. “oh, no, we ain’t, though! you ’old ’im, ben, and i’ll go and get a pistol; ’old ’im!”
ben valiantly seized the lion by its mane and tail, but it did not care for such treatment; it began to snarl and swish about the room, dragging poor ben as if he had been just a piece of rabbit pie.
“'old ’im! ’old ’im!” exhorted mrs. squance, as246 she popped on her bonnet and shawl. “you ’old 'im!”
“all right,” breathed ben, as she ran off and began the descent of the long narrow staircase. almost at the bottom she met a piano coming upwards. it was not a very large piano, but it was large enough to prevent her from descending any further. it was resting upon the backs of two men, one in front, whose entirely bald, perspiring, projecting head reminded her of the head of a tortoise, and one who followed him unseen. they crawled on all fours, while the piano was balanced by a man who pulled it in front and another who pushed it from behind.
“dear me!” exclaimed mrs. squance. “i ’ope you won’t be long.”
they made no reply; the piano continued to advance, the bald man swaying his head still more like a tortoise. she began to retire before them, and continued retiring step by step until she became irritated and demanded to know the owner of that piano. the men seemed to be dumb, so she skipped up to the second floor to make enquiries, knocking at the first door with her left hand—the right one still hurting her very much. it was exasperating. someone had just painted and varnished the doors, and she was compelled to tap very lightly instead of giving the big bang the occasion required. consequently no one heard her, while her hand became covered with a glutinous evil liquid. she ran up to the third floor. here the doors were all right, but although she set up a vigorous cannonade again no one heard her, at least, no one replied except some247 gruff voice that kept repeating “gone, no address! gone, no address!” she opened the doors, but there seemed to be no one about, although each room had every appearance of recent occupation: fires alight, breakfast things recently used, and in the bedrooms the disordered beds. she was now extremely annoyed. she opened all the doors quickly until she came to the last room, which was occupied by the old clergyman who kept ducks there and fed them on macaroni cheese. it was just as she feared; the ducks were waiting, they flocked quacking upon the passage and stairs before she could prevent them.
“i’m sure,” screamed mrs. squance, in her dreadful rage, “it’s that lion responsible for all this!”
she wasted no more time upon the matter. she rapidly descended the stairs again, treading upon innumerable indignant ducks, until she came to the piano. here she said not a word, but, brushing the leading man aside, placed her foot roughly upon the slippery head of the first crawling man and scrambled over the top of the instrument, jumping thence upon the back part of the hindmost man, who turned his feet comically inwards, and wore round his loins a belt as large as the belly-band of a waggon horse.
she proceeded breathlessly until she came to the last flight, where, behold! the stairs had all been smashed in by those awkward pianists, and she stood on the dreadful verge of a drop into a cellar full of darkness and disgusting smells. but she was able to leap upon the banister-rail which was intact, and slide splendidly to the ground floor. an unusual sight awaited her. mrs. squance did not remember248 ever to have seen such a thing before, but there in the hall a marvellous eustacia tree was growing out of the floor. she was not surprised at the presence of a tree in that unwonted situation. she had not noticed it before, but it did not seem out of place. why shouldn’t trees grow where they liked? they always did. mrs. squance invariably took life as she found it, even in dreams. while she was surveying the beautiful proportions of the eustacia tree, the richness of its leaves, and its fine aroma a small bird, without warning or apology, alighted upon her right hand—which she carried against her chest as if it were in a sling, though it wasn’t—and laid an egg on it. it was so annoying, she did not know what to do with it; she was afraid of smashing it. she rushed from the building, and entered the butcher’s shop a few doors away. the shop was crowded with customers, and the butcher perspired and joked with geniality, as is the immemorial custom with butchers. his boy, a mere tot of five or six years of age, observed to mrs. squance that it was “a lovely day, ma’am,” and she replied that it was splendid. so it was. people were buying the most extraordinarily fleshly fare, the smelt of an ox, a rib of suet, a fillet of liver, and one little girl purchased nineteen lambs’ tongues, which she took away secretly in a portmanteau.
“now mrs. squance, what can i do for you?” enquired the butcher. without comment she handed him the egg of the bird. he cast it into the till as if it were a crown piece. “and the next thing, ma’am?”
249
“'ave you got such a thing as a pistol, mr. verryspice?”
mr. verryspice had, he had got two, and drawing them from the belt wherefrom dangled his sharpener, he laid two remarkable pieces of ordnance before her. in her renewed agitation she would have snatched up one of the pistols, but mr. verryspice prevented her.
“no, no, ma’am, i shall have to get permission for you to use it first.”
“but i really must ’ave it immediate....”
“yes?” said the butcher.
“ ... for my husband.”
“i see,” he replied sympathetically. “well, come along then and i’ll get an interim permission at once.” seizing a tall silk hat from its hook and placing it firmly upon his head he led her from his establishment.
“singular that the trams are all so full this morning,” commented mrs. squance as they awaited a conveyance.
“most unusual, ma’am,” replied mr. verryspice. but at last they persuaded a bathchair man to give them a lift to their destination, where they arrived a little indecorously perhaps, for the top-hatted butcher was sitting as unconcernedly and as upright as a wax figure upon mrs. squance’s knees. the office they sought lay somewhere in a vast cavernous building full of stairs and corridors, long, exhausting, hollow corridors like the underground railway, and on every floor and turning were signposts of the turnpike variety with directions:
“to the bedel of st. thomas’s basket, 3 miles.”
250
“registrar of numismatics and obligations, 2-1/4.”
along one of these passages they plunged, and after some aggravating hindrances, including a demand from a humpty-backed clerk for a packet of no. 19 egg-eyed sharps, and five pennyworth of cachous which she found in her bosom, the permission was secured, and the butcher thereupon handed the weapon to mrs. squance.
“what did you say you wanted it for?” he asked.
mrs. squance’s gratitude was great, but her indignation was deep and disdained reply. she seized the pistol and began to run home. rather a stout lady, too, and the exercise embarrassed her. her hair fetched loose, her stockings slipped down, and her strange, hurrying figure, brandishing a pistol, soon attracted the notice of policemen and a certain young greengrocer with a tray of onions, who trotted in her wake until she threatened them all with the firearm.
breathlessly at last she mounted the tremendous staircase. happily in the interval the damage had been repaired, the tree chopped down, piano delivered, and ducks recaptured. she reached her rooms only in time to hear a great crash of glass from within. old ben was strutting about with a triumphant air.
“i done ’im—i done ’im,” he called. “you can come in now; i’ve just chucked ’im through the window!” and sure enough he had. the sash looked as if it had been blown out by a cannon-ball. mrs. squance peered out, and there, far down at the front door, curled up as if asleep, lay the lion. at that moment the milkman arrived, with that dissonant clatter peculiar to milkmen. he dashed down his251 cans close by the nose of the lion, which apparently he had not seen. the scared animal leaped up in its terror, and darting down an alley was seen no more.
so far this narrative, devoid as it is of moral grandeur and literary grace, has subjected the reader’s comprehension to no scientific rigours; but he who reads on will discern its cunning import—a psychological outcome with the profoundest implications. listen. mrs. squance awoke that morning in her own hard-looking little house of one floor, with the hard-looking shop, startled to find the window of their room actually smashed, and inexplicable pains in her right hand. she related these circumstances in after years with so many symptoms of truth and propriety that she herself at last vividly believed in the figure of old ben as a lion-slayer. “saved my life when i was ’tacked by a lion!” she would say to her awed grandchildren, and she would proceed to regale them with a narration which, i regret to say, had only the remotest likeness to the foregoing story.
