It
was to Pipette that the idea originally occurred, but it was upon
Pip that parental retribution subsequently fell, Pipette being
merely dismissed with a caution. This clemency was due chiefly to
the intercession of Cook, who stated, in the rôle of principal
witness, that the "poor lamb" (Pipette) "could never have thought
of such a thing by herself." This in spite of the poor lamb's
indignant protests to the contrary. In this matter, as in many
others, Cook showed both personal bias and want of judgment; for
Pipette was as sharp as a needle, while Pip, though a willing
accomplice and a philosophical scapegoat, was lacking in
constructive ability and organising power.
But we have somehow begun at the
end of the story, so must make a fresh start.
The Consulting Room, which was
strictly out of bounds (and consequently a favourite resort of the
children when the big, silent man, who kissed them twice a day, was
out), contained many absorbingly interesting and mysterious
objects, whose uses Pip and Pipette were dying to know. For
instance, there was the Oven Door. It was set in the wall near the
fireplace, miles up,—quite five feet,—and was exactly like the oven
in the kitchen, except that it was green instead of black. Also, it
had a beautiful gold handle. It was not hot, though, for one day
Pip climbed on a chair to feel; neither did it open, for he was
unable to turn the handle.
They had asked Mr. Evans about
it, and he had informed them that it was a place to put bad little
boys and girls in. But that was on a day when Mr. Evans was cross,
having just had words with Cook about the disgraceful delay between
the fish and joint at last night's dinner. Pipette, therefore,
outwardly incredulous but inwardly quaking, appealed to Cook, and
asked confidentially if the strange thing were not an oven;
whereupon Cook embraced her and presented her with an apple, and
wondered what the little precious would get into her poor head
next, adding as an afterthought that Mr. Evans ought to be ashamed
of himself. Pipette was so pleased with the apple and the task of
conveying Cook's message to Mr. Evans's pantry—this was the name of
the place where he lived; there was a delightful thing there called
the Filter, with a little tap that you could turn on if no one was
looking—that she quite forgot to ask what the Oven Door really was;
so the mystery remained unsolved for many a day.
There were other wonderful things
lying about. Books in plenty (but then books are dull things if you
don't happen to be able to read), and two or three curious little
articles like wooden trumpets, called "stuffyscopes." It was
impossible to play tunes on these, though, and they puzzled the
children sorely, until one joyful day when Pipette was taken with a
cold on her chest, and Father—the name of the big, silent man who
kissed them twice a day—took her into the Consulting Room and used
one of those very instruments "to listen to my tummy wiv," as she
afterwards explained to the envious Pip, who had not been permitted
to be present.
"Did it hurt much?" inquired
Pip.
"Not bewwy much," replied
Pipette, unwilling to throw away a good chance of posing as a
martyr. "He putted one end against his ear and the other against my
pinny, and said, 'Hold your breff,' and I holded it. Pip, I've
thought of a lovely game! Let's see who can hold our breff
longest."
This suggestion was adopted, and
the new game kept them occupied for quite ten minutes. After that
Pipette surrendered unconditionally. To hold your tongue is bad
enough, but to hold your breath as well, in competition with a
small, silent boy with a solemn face, serious eyes, and lungs
apparently of gutta-percha, who seems to suffer no inconvenience
from feats of endurance that would exhaust a Red Indian, is more
than a mere daughter of Eve can compass.
They were in the Consulting Room
at the time, Father having gone out, as he always did between
eleven and one; and the various unexplained mysteries of that
delightful apartment, which were becoming a serious strain upon
Pipette's feminine curiosity, once more lay before them. For the
hundredth time they made the tour of the room, gazing, fingering,
and wondering.
They merely sighed as they passed
the Oven Door. That mysterious portal was past all comprehension.
They had made one last effort to obtain first-hand information on
the subject only last night, with highly unsatisfactory results.
They were always taken to the dining-room at half-past seven to say
good-night to Father, who to his numerous other eccentricities
added that of eating his dinner at an hour when properly
constituted people were going to bed. (Pip's rather hazy scheme of
theology, imbibed in scraps from Cook and others, included a
private heaven of his own construction, in which at bedtime little
boys, instead of being hustled upstairs by an under-housemaid, sat
down to a heavy dinner of several courses.) On this occasion the
pair had entered the dining-room bound by the most deadly oaths
known to childhood to break down their shyness, and ask once and
for all what lay behind the Oven Door. But alas! desire outran
performance, and both—all three, in fact—made a sorry mess of
things. The big man, almost as shy of them as they were of him,
asked Pip, heavily but kindly, how he had spent the afternoon; not
because he wished to know, but because the question afforded a
conversational opening. Pip replied politely that he had been down
the street posting a letter with "one of the girls." He used the
expression in all good faith: his firm friend the milkman cried it
down the area every afternoon in some such form as, "Anything fresh
to-day, girls?" or, "Well, girls, what news?" The big man, however,
frowned, and said, "Come, come, sir, no kitchen manners here, if
you please," and turned to Pipette, who, with a boldness surprising
to herself, was endeavouring to climb on to his knee.
Having reached that eminence,
Pipette, assuming a certain coaxing expression which she had found
absolutely infallible with Cook, and not without a certain effect
on Mr. Evans himself, said rather tremulously—
"Please, Father, is that oven
door in the Kersultin' Room reelly a oven, or is it just—just to
put bad little boys and girls in, like what Mr. Evans says?"
Mr. Evans, who up to this point
had been standing in the background, listening to the conversation
with an indulgent smile, suddenly remembered that it was time to
bring the fish up.
Her father glanced down upon
Pipette curiously. He looked tired and worried, as West-End
physicians with enormous practices not infrequently do.
"What do you mean by 'oven door'?
And what's all this nonsense about Mr. Evans?"
Pipette began to quail. This big
man was cross about something, just like Mr. Evans when he had
"indergestion." Her lip began to tremble.
"I didn't fink it would make you
angry," she said rather piteously. "It was just that big oven door
in the Kersultin' Room. Me and Pip wanted to know so much, and
there wasn't nobody to ask, exceptin' Mr.——"
Here Father, much to Pipette's
surprise and embarrassment, suddenly hugged her to his breast,
murmuring the while to himself. Then he kissed her twice,—as a rule
she kissed him once,—shook hands solemnly with Pip, and despatched
them to bed.
The children had no nurse. The
last holder of that position had left soon after their mother's
death, and Cook had begged so hard to be allowed to take care of
the "little dears" herself, that Father, who was too deeply sunk in
the apathy of grief to desire to haggle over questions of domestic
management, listlessly agreed. Since then Pip and Pipette had been
washed, dressed, fed, and bedded by a syndicate composed of Cook
and her myrmidons, who brought them up according to their own
notions of respectability. Emily, the kitchen-maid, for instance,
made no objection to Pip stirring his tea with the handle of his
knife; but what shocked her ideas of etiquette and deportment was
the fact that he insisted on doing so with his left hand. Somehow
Pip's left hand was always getting him into trouble. It was so
officious; it was constantly usurping the duties and privileges of
its fellow, such as cleaning his teeth, shaking hands, and blowing
his nose,—literal acts of gaucherie that distressed Emily's genteel
soul considerably.
After the children had gone
Father sat staring at his untasted dinner. Occasionally his gaze
travelled to the opposite end of the table, where some one used to
sit,—some one who had been taken from him by an inscrutable
Providence five years before. Had she lived, Pip would not have
referred to the kitchen-maid as "one of the girls," nor would
Pipette be calling the butler "Mr. Evans." All these years he had
been trying to hide his desolation by burying himself in his work,
with the result that he now found himself busy,—overworked, in
fact,—rich, and famous, a man at the head of his profession. Cui
bono? His children, whom he had promised his dying Dorothea to love
and cherish, were learning to venerate the butler and to converse
in the jargon of the scullery!
So the Oven Door had to remain an
unsolved mystery, and Pip and Pipette were compelled to comfort
themselves with the Talking-Hole. This was a most absorbing affair,
and, thank goodness! it was no mystery.
The Talking-Hole was carefully
plugged with a whistle; and whenever a visitor came to see
Father,—they came in shoals between one o'clock and three,—Mr.
Evans would uncork a similar hole in the wall of the hall, and
after blowing up it vigorously, would murmur the name of the
visitor; and his words, owing to the fact that the Talking-Hole in
the hall was in some mysterious way connected with the Talking-Hole
in the Consulting Room, were conveyed to Father's ear. The
conversation as a rule was of a formal and fragmentary nature,
limited on Mr. Evans's part to the announcement of the visitor's
name and some such remark as "Special appointment," or "No
appointment," and occasionally, "Urgent case,"—always concluding
with "Very good, sir." After that Mr. Evans would conduct the
visitor up the three carpeted stairs which led to the Consulting
Room.
Pip and Pipette loved the
Talking-Hole. It was almost their only toy, and it was the more
precious to them because they could not use it except when Father
was out and Mr. Evans taking his afternoon siesta. Their one
child-friend, Tattie Fowler, who was occasionally brought to spend
the afternoon with them when her nurse had made arrangements to
spend it elsewhere, was always regaled with a full-dress
performance whenever she came.
The method of procedure was
invariably the same. The children knew every move by heart. The
moment that Mr. Evans, having closed the front door on Father, had
closed his bedroom door upon himself, Pip would stalk with much
majesty into the Consulting Room, shutting the door carefully
behind him.
After an interval of about one
second, Tattie, endeavouring faithfully to imitate Mr. Evans's
stately tread,—have you ever seen a kitten trying to walk like an
elephant, reader?—would approach the Talking-Hole in the hall,
uncork the tube, and despatch an excited hurricane on its way to
the Consulting Room. The following dialogue would then
ensue:—
A gruff voice down the tube.
Well?
Tattie [reading from an imaginary
card]. Mr. Henry Hatkins, sir! (This, by the way, happened to be
the name of Tattie's nurse's "young man.")
The Voice. Any appointment?
Tattie. None, sir.
The Voice. What's the matter wiv
him?
Tattie. Infruenza, he thinks,
sir.
The Voice. Send him up.
Tattie. Very good, sir.
Then Tattie would cork up the
tube and conduct Pipette, who had been sitting patiently in the
Waiting Room, up the three stairs to the Consulting Room. Here she
abruptly dropped the rôle of Mr. Evans, and announced firmly—
"Now, Pip, it's my turn to be
Father!"
(Tattie had no father of her own,
and imagined that the term merely implied a large, silent man who
lived in a room full of fascinating playthings, opening Oven Doors
and blowing down Talking-Holes.)
After that Pip would be the
patient, Pipette Mr. Evans, and Tattie Father, and the performance
was repeated in extenso. Pipette, as the youngest, succeeded to the
proud position of "Father" last of all.
Each of them played the leading
part in different fashion. Pip, enjoying every moment of his
impersonation, always sat solemnly in the big swivel-chair at the
table until the whistle blew, when he would lounge across to the
Talking-Hole and conduct the conversation as deliberately as
possible. Pipette, on the other hand, possessed none of this
artistic restraint, and was always standing on a chair, with her
small ear ecstatically pressed against the mouth of the tube, by
the time that Pip, in the character of Mr. Evans, was ready to
converse with her. Consequently his withering blast, when it
arrived, impinged straight upon Pipette's eardrum, frequently
knocking her off her chair and invariably dulling her hearing for
the afternoon.
Considerable freedom, too, was
permitted in the interpretation of the part of Mr. Evans,
especially in describing the patients' symptoms. In this respect
the children were compelled to draw chiefly upon their own somewhat
slight experience; for Mr. Evans, though he invariably gave the
patients' names, was not as a rule entrusted with their complaints
as well. Consequently the maladies which were shrieked up the tube
so gleefully were those indigenous to small children, cooks and the
like. When introduced by Pipette, the patient was usually suffering
from "palpurtations, that bad!" (an echo of Cook); Tattie, whose
pretty and interesting mamma affected fashionable complaints, would
diagnose the case in hand as "nerves all in a jangle again"; while
Pip, who was lacking in imagination but possessed a retentive
memory, invariably announced, with feeling, that the visitor was a
victim of a "fearful pain in his (or her) tummy!"
Near the Talking-Hole, on a small
table, stood "The Terriphone." This, they gathered, was a sort of
long-distance talking-hole. You turned a little handle, and, taking
a queer, cup-shaped arrangement off a hook, conversed affably
through it with unseen people, situated somewhere at the back of
beyond. The children had seen Mr. Evans use it for sending messages
to Father via Mr. Pipes. Mr. Pipes was a great friend of Pipette's.
In the first place, he wore a uniform, which always appeals to the
feminine mind. Then he lived in a fascinating little glass house at
the gates of a great building called "The Orspital," where Father
apparently spent much of his time. In the courtyard inside the
gates bareheaded young men passed to and fro, discoursing learnedly
of mysterious things called "Ops." Mr. Pipes wore two medals on his
uniform, but beyond these there was nothing very attractive in the
glass house excepting the Terriphone, which stood on a little ledge
beside the pigeon-hole. Mr. Pipes, being attached to Emily, the
under-housemaid, was always glad to see the children when it was
that engaging damsel's turn to take them for a walk. From him they
learned one day that his Terriphone communicated with the one at
home, quite three streets away.
"It must be a long hole,"
remarked Pip reflectively to his sister.
The conversation then turned upon
the weather. Mr. Pipes announced to the sympathetic Emily that, as
a result of having to sit all day in a blooming greenhouse, his
feet were slowly turning to ice. The authorities of the Orspital,
he added bitterly, declined to allow him a fire, alleging that an
oil-stove was sufficient for his needs.
"What a shime!" said pretty
Emily.
"Something crool!" exclaimed
sympathetic Pipette. (She had picked up this expression from Susan,
the kitchen-maid, who was regarded by her colleagues as being
somewhat "common in her talk.")
"Pore devil!" remarked Pip
dispassionately.
"Master Pip!" cried the
scandalised Emily, blushing in a manner which Mr. Pipes thought
most becoming.
Pip, who had just gathered this
pearl of speech from the lips of one of the hatless young gentlemen
who talked of "Ops," turned his steady and inscrutable gaze upon
Emily, beneath which that damsel's fetching frown faded, as it
always did, into an uneasy smirk.
"There is something about that
child," she once confided to Cook, "that makes me feel as weak as
water. Looks at you as though your 'air was coming down on your
face smudged. Says nothink, but he's a masterful one. Be a terror
some day!"
Meanwhile Pipette, in whose
charitable little soul a new and splendid scheme of outdoor relief
had just sprung into being, asked, in a tone of suppressed
excitement—
"Mr. Pipes, please, does your
Terriphone go straight to our house?"
"As straight as straight, me
lady," replied Mr. Pipes, who affected an easy jocularity when
conversing with Pipette.
"Ooh!" Pipette turned to her
brother.
"Pip, amind me to tell you
somethin' when we get home."
Pip turned a cold glance upon
her.
"You'll tell me all about it on
the way there, I expect."
"I won't!" cried Pipette
indignantly.
"Oh, yes, you will. Women can't
keep nothin' to theirselves."
This pronouncement, delivered in
Mr. Evans's most impressive manner, roused Emily and Mr. Pipes to
unseemly mirth, and nearly reduced Pipette to tears. Mr. Pipes
remarked that Pip was a "caution," while Emily summed him up as a
"cure." Shortly after that, Emily and Mr. Pipes having made a now
familiar reference to "the same old spot at half-past four on
Sunday," the visit terminated with the usual expressions of
good-will, and the children were taken home to tea.
Pipette's offended dignity held
out till next morning, when, as soon as the banging of the front
door announced that Father had gone off in his brougham for his
daily round, she proposed a visit to the Consulting Room.
"In the morning? What for?" said
Pip.
Pipette was positively heaving
with suppressed excitement.
"You go there and wait," she
said, "and I'll run down to Cook a minute, and then we'll—no, I
won't tell you yet! Go on!"
Fearful of letting her precious
secret escape too soon, she gave Pip a push in the direction of the
Consulting Room and danced off to the kitchen, leaving that
impassive philosopher to ruminate upon the volatile temperament of
the female sex. However, he departed as bidden, and amused himself
by sitting in the swing-chair, and endeavouring without success,
for the hundredth time, to play a tune on a stethoscope.
Presently Pipette returned,
carrying two little basins of the soup which usually served to span
the yawning gulf between their breakfast and dinner.
Pip took his soup, and began to
drink it.
"Stop a minute, Pip!" screamed
Pipette.
Pip put down his basin.
"Well, what is it now?" he
remarked.
Pipette at last unfolded her
plan.
"Pip," she began a little
shyly,—like all inventors, she dreaded criticism,—"you 'member poor
Mr. Pipes saying how cold he was?"
"Yes."
"Well, let's send him this nice
hot soup, Pip,—by Terriphone!"
The last words came with a rush.
Then Pipette, heaving such a sigh as Sinbad must have emitted when
he had got rid of the Old Man of the Sea, awaited her brother's
reply.
Pip smiled indulgently.
"Silly kid!" he remarked.
Pipette had expected this.
"Yes," she said; "but, Pip,
wouldn't it be loverly to do it?"
Pip's practical mind began to
evolve difficulties.
"How are you goin' to do
it?"
Pipette projected upon him a
glance in which artless surprise, deferential admiration, and
simple faith were exquisitely mingled,—a glance which, in after
years, her husband once ruefully described as "good for a ten-pound
note at any hour of the day,"—and replied simply—
"I thought you would manage all
that, Pip. You're so bewwy clever!"
"All right," said Pip. "Let's do
it."
Thus it is that women make fools
of the strongest men.
They carried their soup carefully
over to the little table beside the telephone.
"I say," said Pip suddenly, "is
he to have both basins?"
Pipette's bounteous nature would
gladly have sacrificed both Pip's lunch and her own, but she
thought it wiser to concede this point.
"No; one will do, I fink," she
replied.
"All right. You can drink half
mine," said Pip.
They gravely drank Pip's soup,
turn about, and then applied themselves to the matter in
hand.
First, they lifted the receiver
of the telephone from its rest and surveyed it doubtfully. There
was a cup-shaped receptacle at one end into which soup could easily
be poured, but the "tube" which connected it to the instrument was
of very meagre dimensions.
"Are you sure there's a pipe all
the way?" inquired Pip doubtfully.
"Certain. It's just the same as
the Talking-Hole, only thinner. And the Talking-Hole has got a pipe
all the way, 'cause don't you remember you put a glass marble in
one day when I told you not to, and it fell out in the hall?"
Pip's doubts were not quite
satisfied even with this brilliant parallel.
"It'll take a long time to get
through," he said. He was fingering the silk-coated wire. "This
pipe's awful thin. A marble would never get down it."
"No, but the soup will twickle
down all right," said Pipette, whose mind, busy with works of
mercy, soared far above these utilitarian details. (In later years
she was a confirmed bazaar organiser.)
"We'll ring and tell him first,
shall we?" suggested Pip.
"Yes, let's!" murmured Pipette
joyfully.
She turned the call-handle, and
Pip held the receiver, just as he had seen Mr. Evans do. After a
decent interval he remarked into the cup—
"Are you there, Mr. Pipes? This
is us."
This highly illuminating
statement met with no response.
"I suppose he can hear you," said
Pipette anxiously.
"Oh, yes. I'm talkin' just as
loud as Mr. Evans does."
"I suppose you'll be able to hear
him, then?"
"I expect so. But it's a long
way. Ring again."
This time, in turning the
call-handle, Pipette accidentally placed her hand on the
receiver-hook, with the result that she actually rang up the
Exchange Office.
Presently a voice inquired
brusquely of Pip what he wanted. His reply was a delighted yell,
and an announcement to Mr. Pipes that he had something for him.
Further revelations were frustrated by Pipette, who tore the
receiver from his grasp, and, holding her hand over the opening to
prevent eavesdropping on the part of the bénéficiaire, whispered
excitedly in his ear—
"Don't tell him any more! We'll
just pour it in now, and give him such a surprise!"
Consequently the young lady in
the Exchange Office was soon compelled to relinquish her languid
efforts to find out what No. 015273 really wanted, and
incontinently switched him off, recking little of the way in which
two small philanthropists at the other end of the wire were
treating the property of the National Telephone Company.
Very carefully Pip poured the
soup into the cup-shaped receiver of the telephone, which Pipette
held as steadily as her excitement would permit.
From the first it became obvious
that soup-delivery by telephone was going to be a slow business,
for the cup transmitted the generous fluid most reluctantly.
"It's such a very thin pipe,"
they explained to each other hopefully.
At length Pip remarked—
"I should think some of it had
got there by now."
"Not bewwy much, I don't fink,"
said Pipette; "this handle thing's still pretty full."
"But the basin's nearly empty,"
said Pip. "The stuff must have gone somewhere."
"Some of it has gone on the
floor," said Pipette truthfully.
At this moment the clock struck
one.
"Father will be in soon," said
Pip. "We'd better wipe up."
They propped the telephone
receiver on the little table between the directory and a bookstand,
and cleared up the mess on the floor with a handkerchief—Pipette's.
As they finished they heard the brougham drive up.
"It isn't nearly all gone," said
Pip gloomily, peering into the receiver. "If we hang it up on its
hook the stuff will all fall out. Let's leave it like it is. Father
doesn't never use the Terriphone till after lunch, and it will be
all gone by then. Come on, Pipette."
The two Samaritans turned their
backs upon the telephone and stole out of the room, leaving that
sorely tried instrument to digest its unaccustomed luncheon as best
it might.
It was Mr. Evans who suffered
most. He was sent into the Consulting Room just before dinner to
telephone a message to a patient. The telephone stood in a dark
corner, and the gas in the room was turned low. Mr. Evans was
surprised to find that the receiver, instead of hanging on its
hook, was lying on the little table, carefully propped between the
directory and a bookstand.
On lifting it up he was surprised
by an unwonted feeling of stickiness; but when he held the
instrument to the light, the reason revealed itself to him
immediately in the form of a dollop of congealed chicken-broth,
nicely rounded to the shape of the cup, which shot from its
resting-place, with a clammy thud, on to his clean shirtfront, and
then proceeded to slide rapidly down inside his dress waistcoat,
leaving a snail-like track, dotted with grains of rice, behind
it.
Pip was sent supperless to bed,
where Pipette, completely broken down by remorse and sisterly
affection, voluntarily joined him not much later. The following
week they were sent to school.