"Captain Brodrick is not yet returned, madam," said the janitor. "He said if you came you was to wait, he would not be very long. He's having a hair-cut, I believe, madam, down in Jermyn Street."
"I hope then," said Fanny-Rosa, "that he doesn't let himself be cropped like a convict.
What's the use, I say to him, of having a head of hair like his, and then shaving it off, as though you were doing time? Pray light the gas. The room is like a morgue. What does Captain Brodrick do with himself in such a poky place, I wonder? But I suppose you won't tell me if I ask?"
She laughed, and peeled off her gloves.
The janitor looked uncomfortable. The lady was Captain Brodrick's mother, and though she seemed somewhat unconventional, it would hardly do to discuss the Captain's behaviour. He watched her as she adjusted her bonnet in front of the looking-glass, and, opening a small handbag, flecked some white powder on her face. The result was not very happy.
Fanny-Rosa caught his eye in the looking-glass.
"What's the matter?" she said sharply.
"Nothing at all, madam," replied the janitor, and, bowing, he closed the door behind him.
"Damn fool," muttered Fanny-Rosa, and smoothed away the excess of powder. She gave a twitch to her cape, and fastened the brooch on the face of it. It was a handsome diamond brooch, Johnnie's regimental badge. The pin was always coming undone. She knew she would lose it one day.
She began to walk round the room, picking up the objects on the mantelpiece, opening boxes and examining pictures. Johnnie's desk was shut, but the key was in the tobacco jar on top of it.
Fanny-Rosa opened it, humming a tune to herself as she did so. Papers, and envelopes, and pieces of blotting-paper scattered in all directions.
"Hopelessly untidy," murmured his mother, "exactly like me." There were several bills, none of them paid apparently, and all to account rendered.
Fanny-Rosa read them all. There were one or two invitation cards, which she scrutinised, and a letter, obviously written in a feminine hand, accusing him of neglect and signed "your loving little Doodie."
Fanny-Rosa smiled. Loving little fiddlesticks, she thought. In one drawer she found a doctor's prescription which intrigued her but unfortunately could not be deciphered, and a box of pills that she smelt and tasted but found disagreeable. A step outside startled her for a moment, and she slammed down the desk and began to hum loudly and turn again to the looking-glass. But it must have been the janitor going about his business. The rest of the desk was disappointing.
The drawers were filled with maps and military text-books and orders. Fanny-Rosa turned her attention to the cupboard. It held clothes.
Johnnie's great-coat, and his service jacket, and his top boots. Nothing of interest there, although she liked to touch his clothes, and she let her hand rest lovingly a moment on the service jacket, with the ribbon on the breast. Poor darling! he had worn it out in that terrible Crimea; it was a wonder he had not been frozen to death. Idiotic fiasco. Why anyone had ever gone in for the thing was a wonder to her…
Hullo, what was this? Something in straw stuffed behind the boots. Just what she expected. A bottle of port. And here was another, and another. All empty. She wondered where he kept the full ones.
She shut the cupboard, and opened the door into the little bedroom beyond. Nothing here, except his bed, and his wash-basin, and a chest-of-drawers. She hesitated a fraction of a second before opening the bedside cupboard. In it she found a bottle of whisky, half full. She shut it again, and went back into the sitting-room.
"If he must drink," she said to herself, "why doesn't he put it all out on the sideboard?
There's nobody to see. Besides, I would not mind a glass of port myself."
She drew her chair close to the meagre fire, and poked at the coals. Men had no idea of comfort, especially army men. They got so used to early hours and iron beds and general dreariness that they never seemed to expect anything else. Edward was just the same now he had entered the regiment too. Henry was different. He was the only one of the boys who really knew how to live. And Herbert, leaving Oxford to go and be a curate in that Liverpool slum, was quite beyond her. He had been such a bright, amusing little boy too. As for Fanny, well, it was exactly like her to marry a clergyman. Not that she had anything against Bill Eyre; he was a most worthy creature, and had some money too, and after all the Eyres were one of the oldest families in the country. But there was something about a clergyman. ' and slaughter that she could not believe him. Here he was though. The door burst open, and the darling boy came into the room.
"Forgive me, I've kept you waiting," he said, going to her at once and taking her in his arms.
"Have they cropped you now?" she said, turning him about, and he laughed, showing his dark head, and bent it for her to kiss.
"If you had your way, mother, you'd have my hair on my shoulders still," he said.
Johnnie at twenty-six was much the same as he had been at seventeen, but taller, broad-shouldered, though not as tall or as broad as his brother Henry, who outstripped him by two inches. His face had coarsened somewhat, his mouth had become more obstinate, and the expression in his eyes a little arrogant, a little watchful, as though he expected criticism and would squash it before it came.
"Well, what's all the excitement?" he said.
"Why am I to take everybody out to dinner?"
"A celebration," said Fanny-Rosa. "It's really rather an honour. Henry has been made high sheriff for Slane, and he's only twenty-four."
"Good heavens!" said Johnnie. He was silent a moment, and then he laughed. "I always did know Henry had the talent of the family," he said. "He won all the honours he could at Eton, and I did not achieve any. By all means let's celebrate. I don't grudge him his success.
High sheriff of Slane, is it? We must pull his leg about it."
Fanny-Rosa was relieved. Sometimes she was just the smallest bit anxious that darling Johnnie might be jealous of his younger brother's triumphs.
Everyone seemed to be so fond of Henry, in this country as well as across the water. He had hosts of friends. And wherever she went, "whether it was over there, or to stay with Eliza in Saunby, or here in London, people would seem interested when they heard her name, and say, "Are you the mother of Henry Brodrick? But how delightful to meet you! We are so devoted to your son." She was glad and proud of course, and Henry was a dear no doubt, and very charming and good-looking, but she wished sometimes that it would be the other way about and someone would say, "I met your eldest son, Captain Brodrick, last week.
What a splendid fellow he is!" But no one ever did say that. Only once, in London, had she come across a man who knew Johnnie, and he had been very non-committal. "Oh, yes," he said, "I did serve with him at one time, before the war… Haven't seen him since," and then changed the subject. Once she had asked Edward, soon after her younger son had joined the regiment, whether there was any unfair feeling against his eldest brother. Edward had looked most uncomfortable.